


Months Gone By

by kenoyergrrl



Category: TWD Daryl/Andrea, The Walking Dead, Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, Walking Dead AU/AR
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-27
Updated: 2012-08-27
Packaged: 2017-11-13 00:20:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/497289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kenoyergrrl/pseuds/kenoyergrrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following the tragic chaos at the prison, Daryl and Andrea become separated from each other with their respective groups, and spend months trying to find each other with the mutual goal of reaching Alexandria, Virginia, a rumored safe-haven for ZA survivors. Little does Daryl know that Andrea harbors a surprise...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Months Gone By

**Author's Note:**

> AU/AR, may deviate from canon and definitely deviates from the later TWD comic's storyline. Why? Because, spoiler alert, I'm a sucker for happy endings.
> 
> This is my first Big Bang, so I didn't completely know what I was doing. Thank you to all who contributed to editing, previewing, giving advice, etc.

Months Gone By

Andrea

It was positive. Shit.

Her fears confirmed, Andrea set the pregnancy test stick down on the prison bathroom's counter and pressed an index finger and thumb to her forehead, trying to quell her impending headache and the oncoming fear that grew inside of her. What am I going to do now? she thought.

Her mind racing, she thought to one of the precious few times that she and Daryl were stupid, careless, irresponsible about their use of birth control. The condoms that Maggie had supplied were at easy access, but on a few of the occasions when passion struck, she and Daryl threw caution to the wind and just went with their impulses. 

Most recently when they'd failed to use a condom--about two or three weeks ago, to Andrea's calculations--Daryl had approached her by surprise when she was taking a shower in the large prison bathroom alone, late at night. She was exhausted from her watchtower shift; the day was uneventful but the summer heat was unbearable, particularly because Rick had required her to don the riot gear at all times when she manned the tower, and the suit made the freaking heat worse. Everyone had to be prepared for an ambush, Rick warned, and who knew what kinds of ammunition the Governor was going to bring from whatever his group was able to stockpile from the armory?

In any case, after she'd stripped off her sweat-covered, grimey clothes and turned on the steaming hot shower water to scrub herself with the prison-issue body wash and tune out for awhile, sex had been the last thing on Andrea's mind that night, at least until Daryl showed up. He appeared in the shower entrance as naked as she was, his smoldering eyes boring into hers, and judging by his healthy erection and his sly half-smile, it was clear that he was ready for her. 

Under the running water, she had time only to get out a surprised, "Daryl??" before he closed the distance between them, his hand grasping the back of her soaking-wet hair and his mouth locking onto hers as he pressed her body into the cold tile wall behind her. Before she had a chance to ask if he'd thought this was such a great idea, with the rubbers in a box on the bench in their shared cell, he'd already gotten her body and mind to submit to first his fingers and then the rest of him, as she gave herself up to him and simply allowed the passion to run its course.

Her back against the shower's temperature handle was somewhat uncomfortable, but the rest of it was glorious. She was grateful for the running water that muffled the sounds of both of their moans so their prison-mates wouldn't overhear. 

She looked across the huge bathroom at the showerhead under which she and Daryl had made love. Yes, and that was the place they'd conceived.

She suddenly felt the urge to retch, not knowing if it was simply morning sickness or terror that struck her. It could be either; it could be both, she thought. 

Running to the nearest toilet, she lurched over it, grabbing onto the edges of the seat with both hands, but no vomit came. Breathing heavily with her eyes squeezed shut, she held onto the toilet seat until the dry heaves and the feelings of nausea subsided.

"Andrea?" She heard Maggie's voice at the bathroom doorway.

Andrea turned toward the younger woman. The look on Andrea's face must have told Maggie everything she needed to know. Her eyebrows furrowed, and she walked toward the pregnancy test. After inspecting its results, she glanced toward Andrea, shocked.

Neither women said anything for a long moment, but understood the weight of what was happening. Andrea then stood up abruptly and headed toward the doorway. 

"I've got to tell Daryl," Andrea said. Wherever he was, she had to find him.

Daryl

He'd had enough of Merle's bullshit. Even for his brother, this was one step too far.

"I said, 'No.' What part of 'No' don't you fucking understand?"

"Damn," Merle said with his usual snideness toward his younger brother, "You sure have become a pain in the ass since you've been hanging around Captain Rick and his little band o' pussies, haven't you?"

"Can't even believe you'd bring that up, after what Michonne has been through. After what Glenn has been through," Daryl spat, circling his brother as he felt Merle's cold, judging eyes upon him, always belittling him, always putting him down with his manner rather than his words, for as long as Daryl could remember. Nothing changed there, even when the world had gone to hell.

"See, this is what I mean, little brother," Merle said, the right corner of his lip turning upward into a sneer, "Hangin' around these lowlifes has made you soft. Never figured you'd be sympathizin' with a Black chick. And with some Chinese asshole."

"He's Korean," Daryl corrected dryly, with a raise of his eyebrows, though he thought it probably didn't make a damn bit of difference to his older brother.

He was right. "Who fuckin' gives a shit?" Merle answered, starting to mirror Daryl's pacing around him. 

Daryl felt a fistfight coming on, but he sure hoped to hell it wouldn't happen. Not again. Not with his brother, when they'd just so recently been reunited. 

"I just can't believe you'd trust a total fuckin' shithead like that bastard," Daryl told him, referring to the Governor. Daryl was trying his best to remain calm and reasonable, though his brother was making that fairly difficult. "After all the shit he's done to us―done to you, for fuck's sake! He screwed you royal, brother, and here you are talking this shit again?"

Somehow, it was Merle's brilliant idea to invite the Governor and his people to camp out in the prison with them. Merle's "logic," if Daryl could call it that, was that the Governor and Company had stripped the nearby Army base of all of its ammunition and tanks, even after Rick, Glenn, and Andrea had taken what they could among three people and a small pickup. Merle figured that, if Rick's group were to ally itself with Team Governator, they could more effectively fortify the prison against unwelcome intruders, both human and formerly human. Knowing what Daryl knew about the Governor and his clan, this was worse than a bad idea.

"See, you just don't have any tactical sense," Merle lectured to Daryl in his usual condescending fashion, "Like I said, hangin' around this gang of hippies and sissies is turning you into a limpdick, little brother. I knew we should'a stuck with the other guys. They're badasses. This group wouldn't survive ten seconds outside this jailhouse. And you, with your new little college-educated twat -"

That did it. Daryl marched up to Merle, getting into his face and grabbing onto his shirt with both hands. "Say it again, asshole," Daryl said roughly, "Disrespect her again! I'll kick your ass to the Governor's mansion and back again, you shithead!"

Merle tittered in jest at his brother's threats, but the ever-so-faint hint of fear didn't escape Daryl. "C'mon now, little brother, you wouldn't do that to your own brother," he said mockingly, holding up the leather-clad cauterized stump that once bore a hand, "And a cripple."

"Oh, yes, I would, you asshole," Daryl replied in a low voice, shaking him roughly by the shirt, "Even if you are my brother. And a cripple. You bet your sweet ass; I'd pound it into the ground for you."

"Daryl!!" 

Oh, shit. It was Andrea. The last person he'd want to get involved in this Cain-and-Abel bullshit. He pushed away his brother and turned to see Andrea rushing up to them, with Maggie trotting behind her.

"C'mon, boys, break it up," Maggie called to the men.

Grinning licentiously, Merle let out a low whistle. "Well, don't you ladies look sexy in them striped blue jumpsuits," he said. Daryl glared at him before turning to his girlfriend and Maggie.

"Knock it off," Maggie reprimanded. 

Rolling her eyes, Andrea shot Merle a glare before approaching Daryl, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Daryl, we have to talk. In private."

What the hell? Daryl thought. Women and their we-have-to-talk-in-private numbers. He supposed it was about his leaving his socks and underwear on their cell's floor again, or something non-effectual like that, but leave it to Andrea to make a thing about it. 

"Andrea, not now," he said gruffly, glancing at Merle. He reckoned the two brothers had unfinished business, and he didn't want his woman to have any part of whatever type of violence was going to transpire between him and Merle.

"Yes, now!" Andrea insisted loudly, an unrelenting look on her face that Daryl couldn't quite interpret, "Goddamn it, Daryl, it's important!"

Deliberately taunting Daryl, Merle snickered in his brother's face. "Well, look at your little COOSE, getting all up in arms over something 'important!' Just what has your pussy-whipped Daryl done this-"

"That's it!" Daryl snapped, administering a brutal fist to his brother's jawbone. Immediately, Daryl felt Merle punch his face, and felt hot blood rush to his cheek. 

"Sumbitch!" he heard Merle shout before his brother pulled him to the ground and started pummeling him. Daryl pummeled back just as hard as Merle dished out, because that was how Daryl motherfucking rolled.

"Daryl, no!!" Andrea shouted, trying to pull her boyfriend away, but it was too late. The Dixon brother brawl is on, motherfuckers, Daryl thought.

"I'll get Rick!" Daryl heard Maggie call out in between fist jabs to Merle's face and ribs. Oh, wonderful, he thought, let's just invite the whole fucking gang out here and have a party!

"Stop it, Merle!!" Andrea shouted, struggling with Merle to get him away from Daryl, apparently realizing that pulling Daryl away was a fool's errand.

"Get away from me, you cunt!" Merle said, shoving her away with his stump. Hearing Merle call Andrea that nasty insult only made Daryl punch harder. 

"Asshole!" Daryl heard Andrea yell at Merle, and felt his girlfriend pounding on Merle's back with her fists. In spite of it all, Daryl had time to muse to himself as he was suffering Merle's fist blows and giving them back, that Andrea was one hell of a shot with the gun, but she punched...well, like a girl.

"GET UP!!" he then heard Rick's voice yell, "GET THE FUCK UP, and STOP THIS BULLSHIT, ALREADY!!"

Damn, that was fast. Daryl heard the hammer of Rick's gun make a click and knew he meant business. Both brothers rose to their feet upon hearing Rick cock his hammer. Andrea helped Daryl dust off and checked him for anything more serious than bruises. 

"You and your brother," Andrea muttered in disbelief, "always getting into it, ever since he came back."

"Shut up, Andrea," Daryl muttered back. His cheek still smarted from where Merle first punched him. Damn, that was a good first punch.

Dressed in his prison jumper and looking less than manly (but maybe moreso, in actuality, with his rifle), Rick kept his gun pointed at the brothers and glared at them. "Enough of this bullshit!!" Rick commanded. 

Standing next to Rick, Maggie put her hands on her hips and ordered, "Well, whatever kind of tomfuckery you two got going on, you'd better shake hands and make up quickly, because we're in deep shit. The Governor and his people are outside the gates, and they've got tanks."

"Shit," Andrea muttered, and then told Daryl, "I'm going to the north watchtower. You and Rick round up the other ones who can shoot." She trotted away from them toward the armory, where the high-powered rifles were stored.

"Andrea, wait!" Suddenly wide-eyed, Maggie trotted after her friend to stop her, but Andrea kept going.

"Maggie, go find Glenn," Daryl heard Andrea order the younger woman as their voices faded in the distance. Evidently―and correctly, Daryl thought―she'd forgotten about whatever semi-important matter she had to discuss with Daryl, because more pressing concerns were ahead. Including which side his shithead of a brother was going to take.

The outlook didn't look good, so far. "See, what'd I tell you, little brother?" That same damned cocky, patronizing grin formed on his brother's face, and Daryl wanted to slap it right off. "We make nice with Phillip and his people; they make nice with us. We blow'em off, and this is what happens."

"Well, it looks like the shit has hit the fan and it's blown right on our doorstep," Daryl told his brother roughly. "Also reckon you've got a decision to make. You gonna stick with me, or are you going to back to that fuckface of a wannabe Governor?"

"All right, you boys'd better shut the hell up and man up," Rick commanded, inching himself between the two brothers to attempt, however futilely, another brother-on-brother fistfight. "What we need right now is unity. What we don't need right now is more infighting within the group." 

Rick then nodded at Merle, only for a moment dropping the illusion of leadership fairness. "Daryl's right, Merle. This is imminent war, and it's at our gate. If you want to jump ship and go back to your old group, now's the time. Stay with us and fight, or be on the receiving end with your old friends."

"So you wanna fight for this turf, is that it?" Merle asked, edging threateningly toward Rick, his one remaining hand on his hip, "You ain't open to negotiation or cooperatin' or anything like that? I thought pansy-assed leaders like you were all about the diplomatic solutions. Guess I thought wrong!" He followed his last comment with a put-down of a chuckle.

Daryl moved in closer toward Rick, shielding him from whatever Merle had planned for him. Now it seemed he going to have to protect his boss from his own fucking brother. Shit and balls, he thought.

"No. Negotiation," Rick said firmly, standing his ground, "I'm not joining forces and sharing our home―our home―with a group whose leader raped and tortured two of our people and almost killed another one of us. If I remember correctly, Merle, he left you for dead. And you want to go back to him??? Listen - " He threw up his hands, frustrated. "If you want to jump the fence and join your old friends, that's on you. But you are sorely mistaken if you think I'm going to open up our group to the kinds of dangers that Phillip and his group present."

"Are you really that stupid, Rick Grimes?" Merle sneered, an almost-amused half-smile on his face, "Not only does Phillip have you outnumbered and outgunned, he has armored military vehicles that even your high-powered rifles can't penetrate. You think your rag-tag team of misfits and losers is gonna stand a dog's chance in hell against the war machine outside the gate?"

"So it's 'you' and not 'us.' That how it is, brother?" Deeply disappointed, but not surprised, Daryl gave Merle an exhausted glare. "Sounds like you've done and already made up your damn mind. Go on. Get going if that's what you're gonna do. Not like I ain't used to you takin' off, anyway."

"Awwww, little Daryl's pulling the family guilt trip again. Poor little brother, always needin' to get me to feel sorry for your ass!" Merle put on a mock sympathetic face and rubbed the top of Daryl's head like he was still eight years old. "Hangin' around Rick here has done and made you soft. Well, guess what, poor Daryl, I just can't find it in my heart to really give a shit about your poor little feeling-wealings."

Disgusted at him, Daryl flinched away. "Go fuck yourself, Merle," he muttered. He had to do everything in his power to hold back tears, because he knew what was coming next. His brother was going to ditch him. Again.

"Enough," Rick said impatiently, "It's like Daryl said, Merle. If you're not going to stay with us, you'd best be heading out the gate and rejoining your friends. We don't have time to waste on you and your bullshit."

"All right, then, little brother. Rick. Nice knowing you." And with that, Merle sauntered toward the gate, his arms swinging with confidence as the leather prosthetic that an artisan in the Governor's group had so lovingly fashioned for his stump gleamed in the hot sunlight. 

Daryl shuddered a sob and shook it off, looking to Rick for what to do next. "So what's the plan, boss? Want me to get T-Dog and the others?"

"Yes," Rick told him, swinging into action. "Get Glenn, Maggie, Tyreese―anyone and everyone in the camp who can shoot a gun―everyone go to the armory, suit up in the riot gear, and get everything you can carry. I'll get Lori and tell her to take Carl and the baby into the cafeteria, barricade them inside, and grab the ammo from the storage area near there. We'll reconvene in the courtyard in five minutes. The gates should hold the tanks back till then."

"What if Merle unlocks them and lets the whole cavalry inside?" Daryl asked. He wasn't sure if Merle knew how to figure out the locks in his short time being at the prison, but he was taking no chances.

"Glenn has the keys and the lock combinations, remember? Now, get going." 

Thank fuck for that, Daryl thought. Rick hadn't trusted Merle farther than he could throw him to allow anyone in the group to unlock the gates, so all Merle could do to escape was to jump the fence on his own. 

With a glance toward the north watchtower, Daryl ran to Cell Block One to get Michonne and the others. He spotted Andrea donning her riot gear and shouting something he couldn't quite hear to someone, probably Maggie, on the ground below―he thought he heard something like, "disabled, Maggie!", whatever that meant―before manning her rifle and getting the Governor's group in her sights. 

You stay safe, he thought in a mental message to Andrea as he darted inside the prison to find the others. He trusted she would; his woman was a strong and sure sharp-shooter and survivor. But tanks were something their group hadn't yet faced...

Andrea

"Andrea, get down!! For God's sake, you're pregnant!!" Maggie yelled up to her from the ground as Andrea climbed the zig-zag staircase's final step and started dressing herself in the riot gear she'd left in the tower.

"I'm pregnant; I'm not disabled, Maggie!" she called back, securing the gear's fastener in the back and putting on her helmet. She dearly hoped Daryl or anyone else hadn't heard―not because she didn't want him to know, but because she wanted to tell him herself, when the conditions were right. From her vantage point above ground level, she could tell that 'conditions' definitely weren't right for this conversation. 

"What can you see?" Maggie called up to her.

A tank, flanked on either side by two Humvees, stood outside the gates in wait, as if lions awaiting their prey to make the first move before pouncing. Andrea counted twenty-eight men and women, all armed, all in assorted Armed Forces uniforms gathered from the armory. 

The Governor loved his showmanship, Andrea had time to think, simultaneously with a surprised musing, Jesus, twenty eight?? Is that all they've got?? Knowing the size of the Woodbury community, she expected more. Plus, she didn't even see the Governor. 

"A tank and two Hummers," Andrea reported back, "and twenty-eight shooters." She had a foreboding thought. This didn't feel right. Only twenty-eight able-bodied fighters, plus the ones in the Hummers and the tank, out of a community of more than a hundred people? Either the rest of the community were too weak or simply a bunch of cowards, or the Governor had another plan. She vocalized her thoughts to Maggie below. "They could be scouts. The Governor could have more in hiding. Maybe in the forest."

"Is anybody firing any shots, or trying to break the gate open?"

"No. I think they're waiting for us to budge first. Maggie, go to the armory and get the others. We need to be prepared."

"All right. I still don't think it's a good idea for you to be up there."

"I'll be fine, Maggie," Andrea persisted, "Just go to the armory." 

No doubt, Rick had already commanded Daryl to do the same. She glanced to the courtyard in time to see Daryl run inside the prison and Rick heading toward the cafeteria. Probably to get Lori and the kids in there, she thought. Merle was nowhere to be seen. She only hoped that bastard wasn't up to anything stupid, or evil, or both.

Andrea

From across the field, she could hear her boyfriend yell out as the shot grazed her scalp.

“ANDREA!!!”

The shot whizzed along the left side of her forehead, an inch above her eyebrow, just missing her temple yet sending her to the concrete ground. She had barely enough presence of mind to brace her fall by jamming her left elbow behind her, feeling a sharp CRACK! as a sharp pain bolted through her upper arm. 

Am I dead? she thought, her mind reeling as her vision clouded and she began to lose consciousness, sinking to the ground on her side. She touched a set of shaking fingers to her forehead and felt a hot, yet shallow, pool of liquid stream from the wound, which seemed more like a giant scratch than a hole. 

Oh my God my baby my baby my BABY was all she remembered thinking before the world around her went black.

Daryl

On his knees, with his hands bound behind his back and the butt of the Woodbury wanna-be soldier boy asshole's AK-47 against the back of his head, Daryl could do nothing for her. Please be alive, Andrea, PLEASE be alive, for fuck's sake! he thought. He noticed her try to get herself up, but then collapse again on her side as Maggie clambered up the watchtower's stairs in desperation.

“Well, it seems like you've run out of friends to rescue you fellows,” Phillip told Daryl and Rick in amusement. To Daryl, Phillip would never be a real governor.

Behind him, all Merle could offer up to his little brother in his moment of vulnerability was a shit-eating grin.

“You sorry sacks of shit,” Daryl seethed, “We'll make you all pay. Every fucking last one of you.”

“And how do you think you're going to manage that?” Phillip asked.

“RICK!!!”

Daryl glanced up to see Rick's wife running out toward him, carrying Judy, with Carl close behind. With one hand clutching baby Judy to her chest, Lori cocked a pistol with her other hand and aimed it at the person apprehending Rick.

“Lori, for God's sakes!!” Rick yelled, “I told you to stay in the cafeteria with the kids!”

“It was overrun by walkers, Dad!” Carl took his own pistol—Daryl recognized it as his own pistol, the one Rick had graciously let Carl steal back at Hershel's farm—and pointed it at the person apprehending Daryl.

“What??” Rick asked dumbly. Which was exactly what Daryl was thinking. What the hell? Didn't we clear that place of walkers? The prison's cafeteria had long been a place to convene and eat safely...unless Merle and the Governor had sabotaged it by letting in walkers from the outside.

“Put your gun down,” Lori commanded to the lackey who had his own pistol aimed at Rick's head. Holding her baby to her chest and her pistol at the Governor's lieutenant's head, she was the most ferocious Daryl had ever seen her—and by the astonished look on Rick's face, Rick had probably never seen her in that light, either.

“You didn't think we'd let you have an easy out, did you?” Phillip told Lori, confirming what Daryl had suspected of his and his brother's sabotage of the cafeteria. “Your friend Merle let us in on your reconnaissance plan.” 

With that, Merle gave Daryl and Rick a smug grin. It was then that Daryl knew Merle was lost to him forever. Betraying him and his friends wasn't anything a true brother would do.

“You traitorous son of a bitch,” Daryl seethed.

Merle now had his prosthetic bayonet on what used to be his right arm. Probably his new best friend, the Governor, had given it back to him when he decided to switch loyalties. With the point of his knife, he lifted Daryl's chin, so he could look his hand-bound brother in the eyes. 

“You should've known I was always the stronger one, little brother,” Merle told him in a low voice, “Our daddy always said I was gonna be the one to have the last word.”

Rick commands them to run, but the Governor shoots Lori and Judy, who both fall to the ground dead. Carl screams and runs to shield them, but to no avail. Rick is shattered.]

Shocked, Merle darkens toward the Governor and tells him that killing a woman and child was not in the plan. The Governor tells him to get with the plan because it has just been revised. The two men fight, with the Governor stabbing Merle in the stomach. Daryl screams NO and tries to fight with his captor, but struggling, the captor pins him down.

The Governor starts lecturing Rick and Daryl how things are going to be his way from now on, while behind him, Lori and Merle reanimate as walkers and go for the Governor first while Rick and Daryl, in a macabre mix of bewilderment, sorrow, and fascination at Phillip's comeuppance, watch on. Their guards are horrified to see what is happening, so Rick and Daryl wrestle themselves from their grip and use their weapons to shoot them, shoot the Governor in both legs to disable him and allow Lori and Merle to feast on him, and then leave them to their business as they look for the others.

Daryl's first priority is to find Andrea, but she is nowhere to be seen. He tries to follow her trail of blood down the watchtower stairs but it ends in the dirt, signifying that someone―probably either Glenn or Maggie―must have bandaged her up and taken her back in the prison. However, none of the three are anywhere to be found.

Daryl, Rick and Carl make for the prison's back entrance, where they encounter more Woodbury soldiers, fight with them, learn that one of the soldiers has ignited a bomb, and make for the woods before the prison goes up in an explosion of flames.

After wandering with a grief-stricken Rick and Carl for hours through the woods, Daryl finds them shelter in an abandoned house and allows Rick to convalesce after he falls ill. He scavenges what food he can for Carl and himself to eat while hunting for medicine and fluids for Rick.

Eventually, they meet up with T-Dog and Michonne, who managed to escape in the ensuing chaos when the prison was ambushed. Daryl is dismayed to learn that neither of them has seen Andrea, Maggie, or Glenn.

"Did you...?" Tearing up, Rick couldn't finish.

"Yes, I did her a solid," Michonne told him, not seeming to believe the words that were coming out of her own mouth. "Judy, too."

Rick didn't say anything, and neither did Theodore, Carl, or Daryl. All of them stood in their small circle of shock and sadness―even, and especially, Michonne.

"You wouldn't want Lori coming back as a walker, would you?" Michonne asked Rick quietly.

Clearly devastated, Rick shook his head. Daryl knew that what Michonne was saying was harsh, but it was the truth.

After a long pause, Michonne spoke up again. "You wouldn't want the baby coming b-"

"ENOUGH!!" Rick yelled gruffly, burying his face in his hands, sobbing. Feeling terrible for his friend, Daryl clasped one of Rick's shoulders and gave it as comforting a rub as he was able to do, but knew it was probably cold comfort at best. 

Crying himself, Carl hugged his father, joining him in his sorrow. Watching the grieving Rick grasp onto his young son clumsily, attempting to soothe him even as he himself needed so much to be soothed, Daryl wondered what was worse--knowing their loved ones were dead and able to have closure, yet despairing at the finality of losing them forever, or always wondering, like Daryl, if his own loved one was even alive, clinging onto a perhaps futile hope that this was the case.

He saw the back of Michonne's head hunch into her shoulders as she wandered to a live oak tree, leaned against it, and buried her head in her forearm. Seeing her shoulders tremble, he knew she was crying over what she was forced to do. Moved, Daryl started to head toward Michonne to offer her some support, but Theodore was already putting his arms around his girlfriend, whispering into her ear. Daryl opted to give both them and father and son some privacy, and wandered to a nearby stream alone.

As he crouched near the stream, leaning his elbows into his knees with his hands folded, Daryl watched the shallow waters rush over the rocks and listened to the cleansing sounds the stream brought forth as it coursed down its path. He noticed the gray, decaying lower leg of a human upstream, the sinewy black veins flowing with the patterns of the water as they trailed from the part where the leg had been either cut or chewed off somewhere below the knee. Shit, he thought, always something fucking gruesome in this world to mar the beauty of nature. 

It would be nightfall in a few hours, so the five of them would have to find some sort of shelter to hunker down for the night. If it weren't for that stupid leg contaminating the damn water, they'd have some water to drink, and they could worry about food later. For now, they needed to find some place to hide.

“Hey, man,” T-Dog greeted, crouching beside Daryl as he washed off his bolts in the stream. Drying off each one on his shirt, he tucked each bolt methodically into his gear back as T-Dog watched.

“Best we've got for running water,” Daryl said, “at least for now.” He looked up at T-Dog, noticing that Michonne wasn't with him. “Where the hell's your lady?” he asked.

“She and Rick took the kid scouting,” he answered, “for something. Who knows?”

“We could use a sharp-shooter around these parts, is all I'm sayin',” Daryl murmured. He was getting lost in thoughts of Andrea again, and tried to shake them away. 

Stop it, you selfish bastard, he admonished himself. It had only been―what was it? A week? Two weeks?―since Rick had lost his wife and daughter, and Carl his mother and sister. Their deaths were real. Tangible. Resolved. Over and done and mourned, and would be mourned for years to come. He would never mention this to Rick or to Carl, but he had to ponder which was worse―the knowing or the not knowing.

Whether Andrea was alive or dead, and where she was, if she was safe, and if any of the others were with her remained to be seen. Or maybe he would never know. That anguishing uncertainty alone, he thought, felt worse than the finality of deaths he knew about, bodies he saw with his own eyes.

He thought of Sophia and how awful it felt to always be hunting her barely-visible tracks and coming up with nothing to bring back to the group save a washed-up doll. When the reanimated specter that was no longer a living Sophia emerged from the barn, he remembered feeling devastated, disappointed...but in an odd way, relieved. The search was over. They knew where Sophia was, finally. 

His coming to grips with the young girl's tragic closure echoed something Carol had told him when she herself was still alive, when they were all back at Hershel's farm, in their idyllic illusion of safety. At least we know she's with God now, Carol had told him. He had only nodded, having nothing to add to Carol's pious certainty that her daughter now enjoyed a comfortable afterlife away from the planet of death that surrounded them. He'd been raised to believe that a Heaven or a Hell awaited everyone depending on which direction of good or evil a person went down, but now he wasn't so sure. To him, the afterlife was a quaint theory, impossible for any living person to know for certain. Death, however, was a certainty. He preferred to deal with what he knew.

Not knowing where Andrea was or what had happened to her...that was the hard part. Something he buried every morning he and his small band of travelers arose, and every night before they retired to their tents. It was only at times like these that he allowed himself to let her uncertain fate nearly swallow him whole, much like the valley below him swallowed the river...

After T-Dog left and joined his girlfriend and the others, Daryl felt a sob coming on. In the safety of his solitude, he embraced rather than repelled it, as he usually did. The sob overtook him like a storm wave―it only grew as the winds of anguished emotion blew through him. When he was certain T-Dog and everyone else was fully out of earshot or eyesight, he leaned against a tree and cried into the crook of his arm, his tears flowing as naturally as the stream beside him did. 

“Fuck!!” he wailed finally, when he couldn't take his own grief anymore, “Fuck! Fuck!! FUCK!! FUCK IT ALL!!” Over and over again, until it hurt, until he felt it couldn't hurt any more, he bull-kicked the tree trunk he'd just a moment ago used for support. Resigning himself to his loss, he collapsed against the bark again in tears. He realized he hadn't felt this way since Sophia had emerged from the barn as a non-living form, a walker; since the undead specter of Carol had approached him in the prison courtyard as docilely as a walker could before he shot what was left of her in the forehead.

Andrea, where the fuck are you? he had time to think, before realizing that his pleas were but a faint glimmer of hope in what was otherwise a grim way of life that he and his friends should've been used to by now...but somehow would never be.

Andrea

On the long drive along the abandoned Atlantic coastal highway, Andrea nursed her scalp wound in the back of Glenn's truck as Glenn drove and Maggie glanced backward to make sure their friend with the bandaged head was doing okay. 

She had shown no signs of miscarriage and she had still been getting her morning sickness, so the trauma of the gunshot, even having grazed her head, had evidently not caused her to lose her baby. Tough little bugger, just like his daddy, Andrea thought, referring to their baby as a “he” even as she was uncertain of the baby's gender.

Back when the world had not yet “turned” and was somewhat more alive and living, Andrea felt she had finally discovered her purpose in life, and it had little if anything to do with guns and sharp-shooting.

If anything, part of her life's purpose had involved regulating guns and implementing more gun restrictions. After a slew of mass shootings across the U.S., the South Florida ACLU office at which she had been employed had joined forces with the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Brady Campaign to lobby U.S. House Representatives in Miami's Congressional districts to support stronger gun laws. The efforts had been underway and had shown significant signs of promise when the world went to hell, and using any kind of a weapon in stopping the walkers became a must. Luxuries like reinstating assault weapons bans and requiring background checks for carry-and-conceal permits immediately became quaint notions of the past.

And so did Andrea's purpose in life, at least the life she'd known prior to the gloomy new world disorder of which she and the other survivors were now the only truly living part. Ever since she'd stopped a mentally disabled kid in the special-ed classes from getting bullied in middle school, she'd considered herself a champion of the underdog, a crusader of the disenfranchised, a protector of people who were weaker, more powerless, and less privileged than she and her sister had been. 

Her family wasn't wealthy by any means, but she and her sister enjoyed a comfortable middle-class life in Deerfield Beach, surrounded by sun, fishing, friends, and boats. Andrea didn't feel she had the intelligence, beauty, or talent of her younger sister, Amy―an A student who lettered in track and field, regularly earned the starring role in high school plays, and took home the title of Most Likely to Succeed before earning a full scholarship to University of Florida a few years before the walker wasteland broke out. What Andrea did have, however, was the ability to argue a good case and stand up for what she believed was right. 

She took both of these qualities with her to Stetson Law School and into the working world as a civil-rights attorney for the ACLU. She fought Florida's Jim Crow-like voter restriction laws, which disproportionately affected minorities and the poor. As an ACLU representative working in conjunction with Planned Parenthood, she argued on the side of reproductive rights in cases where pharmacy employees were suing over their perceived right to invoke conscience clauses that enabled them to deny women birth control pills their doctors had prescribed to them. She stood up for Trayvon Martin's family when George Zimmerman went to trial for the young boy's murder in the most racially-charged case in more than three decades.

Yet when the world she knew ended, she wondered if any of her fights had been worth it, if all of her struggles on behalf of the downtrodden had been for naught. What were “rights” worth―minority rights, gay/lesbian rights, voter's rights, women's rights―godforsaken human rights―if there were no humans left to have them anymore?

When her sister died early on in the early days of the crisis, she contemplated suicide, believing that she'd failed her only living relative by simply not knowing the younger woman well enough. Always too busy fighting her civil-rights battles, believing that by sticking up for American rights on a larger scale, she could somehow protect her sister from afar, she neglected the only thing in her life who should have mattered more―and then the protector of all things “underdog” couldn't even protect her own sister in the present moment when the hammerhead hit the nail and the walker's teeth bit into her sister's shoulder.

Somehow, when she came out of the long fog of grief and regret, she emerged as a different Andrea―one who was capable and competent with the very weapons she had been groomed to handcuff in the name of public safety. She'd again found her purpose in this new, rotting world. She would be a protector of the living against the dead―only now those who, like her, lived―they were the underdogs. But now, currently, she had another purpose.

Rick had heard of a community in Alexandria, Virginia, that any members of the group should head toward if they were going to get separated. She, Glenn, and Maggie were going to try to make it there eventually, but for now, their priorities were shelter, supplies, and survival from the walkers.

In the tent she'd helped Glenn and Maggie set up along A1A, shielded only by the tarp walls and guardianship of Glenn who took watch with his AK, she nursed her scalp wound, which still smarted. Somewhere in her body, a part of her was at work dividing and duplicating the cells that, merged with Daryl's, would make another human being. And her purpose was to give that human being a safe haven.

Daryl

The abandoned cars on I-85 looked like they'd been there awhile. For how long was anybody's guess, but it was a safe guess, judging by the thick layer of sludge and rainwater debris that coated each car from as far as the eye could see, from both the northbound and southbound directions.

“One of these has got to have a full-enough tank of gas to get us to North Carolina, at least,” Rick told the small group before they began their search, “Look for one that doesn't seem like it's going to mechanically fall apart as soon as we pull out of Spartanburg.”

Rick had told them that they would be most likely to find Andrea, Maggie, and Glenn in Alexandria, where the group had agreed that they should venture, should the prison ever be overcome with either walkers or Phillip's group (and as it turned out, the latter had happened). Virginia was quite a ways from Georgia, and they were going to be deficient on both travel options and fuel to get up there.

Daryl figured that going for a gas-efficient sedan that seated five was going to be the best choice. A Prius person he was not, and an SUV or mini-van would be the most comfortable for the group. But either option would be a gas hog that wouldn't get them twenty miles up the road no matter how full the tank would be. 

Across the median, he spotted Michonne and T-Dog inspecting each of the cars in the southbound direction, occasionally opening a car door to check the gas gauge or scavenge a bit of food or other sundry to stash in their backpacks. On the northbound route, Rick and his son scouted the cars about two hundred feet ahead of him, peeking into the windows with disappointed grimaces as they apparently noticed that the tanks were either empty or the vehicles too much in disrepair to even bother taking them. 

He scanned the area around them. Luckily for the group, no walkers were in sight. It was a bit chilly for any walkers to be roaming the area, and the overcast sky threatening rain might have been a signal to whichever walkers were out there to...who knew, lie on the grass like cows did in a primal effort to stay dry? God only knew what went through the brain stems of the undead when their clumsily lethal urges for living flesh collided with the forces of nature.

Through the window of an older white Honda Accord―Daryl guessed it was a 1999 or 2000 model, definitely a sixth-generation Accord―Daryl noticed that the analog fuel meter was almost up to the F. The fullest tank he'd seen on the road. He stepped backward to inspect the vehicle. It looked like the owner, whoever he or she was, took damned good care of the car before it was left on the road (or before the owner was forcibly taken from the car, Daryl pondered ruefully). Other than the layer of rain sludge that covered its top, it was a very clean car, Daryl thought, all the way down to the plastic cherry-decor air-freshener that dangled from the rear-view mirror.

It was an EX trim with alloy wheels, a power sunroof―no V6 engine, but that would actually work better for the group as a V4 was more fuel-efficient―and no doubt a pretty sweet stereo system. Damn, after listening to no real music whatsoever for the past―how long was it? Six months? A year?―a set of wheels with a stereo system they could at least keep on low volume while they drove down I-85 wouldn't be so shabby.

“Hey, Rick!!” Daryl called out to the other man on Northbound I-85. “Come take a look at this one.” He motioned with his arm toward the Honda, and Rick and Carl walked on the breakdown lane toward where Daryl stood.

“What'd you find, man?” Rick asked, glancing at the car, “Does it have a full tank?”

“Almost to the F,” Daryl told him, “First one with a full tank I've seen on this highway.” He figured T-Dog had siphoned another red gas can's worth of fuel to last them a little longer, even, at least until they'd passed another gas station that hadn't been mined clean of its petrol. 

“It's a five-seater, right?” Rick asked, rubbing his nose and putting his other hand on his hip as he looked over the find. 

“Hell, yeah. Five seats, five seatbelts.” Another advantage to taking the Honda was that Daryl used to fix up Hondas all the time when he was working as an auto mechanic in Macon, before the world went to hell. He knew the engine, carburetor, transmission, starter, and solenoid like the back of his hand and could patch it back up in the unlikely instance that it were to break down, even at its age. “It's a '99 or a 2K, but Hondas can run for years.” 

Daryl opened the front door―it wasn't even locked―and popped the hood to inspect the engine. He took a good look at the car's system and nodded. “You can fuckin' eat off this engine,” he said with approval, looking up at Rick to gauge his opinion.

Rick glanced through the open door at the clutch next to the driver's seat. Three scrunchy ponytail holders were rung around the manual transmission clutch, indicating that the previous owner was probably female. “Know how to drive a stick-shift?”

“Oh, hell, yeah,” Daryl said with a nod, spitting out to the side a fly that had caught in his mouth. “Learned how to drive on a stick.”

“Good, because I can't,” Rick said. “Might be good to check with T. or Michonne on whether they've driven a stick. We should have more than one driver on this thing.”

“I can drive a stick-shift,” Michonne called out, tugging her nearly-overflowing backpack and her katana behind her, with T-Dog close behind.

“You and T. find any other cars that might work?”

Dragging his own backpack behind him, T-Dog shook his head. “All are either on or near empty or in shit shape,” he said, “but we did find a lot of food and stuff. Bottled water. Baby-Wipes.”

At the mention of Baby-Wipes, Rick's face darkened, and he looked away. Daryl's heart sank, and he noticed tears playing at Carl's eyes. Not saying anything, not knowing what the hell he could say, he wondered how it could ever possibly get easier for the two of them.

“All right,” Michonne announced authoritatively, cutting through the gloomy tension that had infected the group, “We'll take the Honda. Think the battery might still be good?”

党T. and I can jump it,” Daryl said. His auto mechanic skills from the old days were hopefully still effective enough that he could tinker with a months-dead battery with T-Dog's help to get the car on the road.

Silently, she lifted the latch near the driver's seat to pop the trunk, and she and T. loaded up their booty into it. Michonne lifted out a lone pink suitcase, probably belonging to a college kid or slightly older. 

“Look through it,” Rick said hoarsely, “maybe it has something we can use.”

She obliged, looking in slight disgust at the frou-frou short-shorts and girlish tank tops that flooded the suitcase. “I can't wear any of this shit,” she muttered, but took out a lone box of tampons and a can of dry shampoo before zipping up the suitcase and casting it aside. 

“Maybe some seventeen-year-old can make do with this,” she said of the suitcase, before shoving the tampons and dry shampoo into her jacket with a glare at Carl, who was staring at her. It mustn't be easy, Daryl thought, being the only woman having to hang around us grunts. At least she was a hard-ass and definitely not the prima-donna type. No wonder she and Andrea were good friends.

T-Dog started to climb into the back seat, but Rick stopped him. “Sit up front, man,” he urged, “You're taller than me. You've got longer legs. I can sit in the back with Carl and Michonne.”

“All right, man,” T-Dog said, and offered him a bottle of water. “Got a few of these things from the cars. You all can share that, and Daryl and I can share another for the road.” 

Daryl got into the driver's seat and put the clutch into neutral. “Whoever owned this took the keys with'em,” Daryl said, with a note of hopefulness that the driver might have fled to safety, “I'll have to hotwire the damn thing. Hold on.”

After everyone had gotten into their seats and put on their seatbelts, Daryl wedged the blade of his hunting knife between the wheel and the steering column, then pushed the locking pin away from the wheel. 

“Shit, I haven't done this in years,” he muttered as the rest of the occupants watched, and found the small wire at the top of the solenoid and the positive battery cable. He crossed the two wires with the assistance of his knife and cranked on the engine. It fired on without a hitch, the battery evidently being good enough to withstand several months―or longer―of not being started up, but that was a Honda for you, Daryl reckoned. 

The fuzz of the dead radio started blaring loudly. Annoyed, T-Dog pushed the button off as Rick, Michonne, and Carl cheered.

“Great job, man,” Rick told him from the back seat, with a slap on Daryl's shoulder, “Let's get the hell out of here.”

Daryl popped the car in reverse and unwedged the Honda from between the two cars that separated him. He drove forward on the breakdown lane past the rows of cars―some of them gruesomely with decomposing bodies in the cabins staring back at them―until the gridlock of cars thinned and he was free to drive on the freeway.

“Damn. Britney Spears. Katy Perry. Miley Cyrus. Aw, hell, no.” T-Dog grumbled as he sifted through the CD visor.

“You can tell a chick owned this set of wheels,” Daryl said, “Anything else besides the MTV set list?”

“Well...here's a JJ Grey and Mofro CD,” T-Dog muttered, “Better'n anything else on this shit list.”

“Prolly wanted to impress a young cat,” Daryl said, gearing down to third as he passed a cluster of walkers in the middle of the road, ravenously devouring the insides of a deer. Things like that simply didn't bother him much anymore. “Put it on in.”

“They're all-ight,” T. commented, “Kinda white-boy bluesy shit, like the crap rich white boys listened to in college.”

“Nice,” Daryl murmured facetiously, but when T. put the CD in the car's player, he didn't think the shit was half-bad. “What's the name of that CD, anyway?” he asked.

“Orange Blossoms.”

Worked for him.

Andrea

The abandoned motel had water-tight security doors, which were impossible for Glenn, Andrea, or Maggie to break open on their own. If they were going to rely on the motel as a safe haven, at least for now, they couldn't break the windows, unless they wanted to deal with having to clean up a lot of broken glass and find strong materials for barricading the window frames. 

“Not a good idea,” Maggie told Glenn at his suggestion, giving her one of her characteristic eyerolls.

“There's got to be some sort of—I don't know—skeleton key or whatever the housekeepers used to clean the rooms.”

“What if there's a herd of walkers in there?” Maggie challenged. Glenn was thinking about breaking into the check-in office, which was closest to the road and completely boarded up. “Maybe whoever boarded up that place wasn't trying to board himself in, but keep walkers from getting out.”

“Well, damn it, Maggie!” Glenn rubbed his eyes with his forefingers, clearly irritated and exhausted. They all were, at this point. “What the fuck else do you think we should do?”

“I said it before, break open one of the room's windows, block off that room, find an interior hallway, and migrate to another room. We won't need any keys if that's the case.”

“How do you know? The inside doors could have locks, too.”

“This motel doesn't look new enough to have the security readers,” Andrea observed, “Maggie might have a point. It's easier to break into one of these rooms without those things. When the power goes off, all of the doors would lock, right?”

“I dunno,” Glenn responded, “I would think they'd unlock, because of a fire hazard or something like that, if the power went down. People would need a way to get out of their rooms. The doors just couldn't stay locked.”

Andrea sighed. Clearly, none of the three of them knew what the hell they were doing. But then again, she thought, when did we ever know what we were doing when all of this started?

Daryl

An answer for an arrow. A gunshot for a would-be walker, and an honest mistake and apology. A few conversations over a dog-eared book Andrea had mined from Dale's trade paperback collection, may he rest in peace. A tentative first kiss behind the barn after the walker killing spree at the fence that Shane led following Dale's death. The long wait to find out where Andrea had gone and who she had found on her lone journey when the group had left her for dead. 

The grateful reunion at the prison a few months later. Her confiding to Daryl, and only Daryl, the horrors of her and Michonne's sojourn there at the hands of the Governor and his henchmen. The blossoming of a friendship, and something more, over canned soup and MREs in the cafeteria and guard duty at all hours of the night. Their first night making love in Daryl's cell. The questioning about the scars on Daryl's back, and Daryl's sparse answer to Andrea before holding her in his arms and kissing her just to shut her up and stop the painful questioning. 

The continued conversation about the scars, the opening of old wounds, but somehow, with Andrea, it was okay to render himself bloody and raw like he hadn't been able to do with anyone in his life, man or woman. Her sensitivity, her caring, her letting him grieve his old life and allowing him to be who he was in all of his lives, even this wretched one they called the present, somehow made more worth living with his friends, most of all Andrea.

She and he hadn't gotten along very well, at first. People like her often turned their noses up at rednecks like him, thinking they were dumber than boxes of rocks and judging them before they fully got to know people like Daryl. He resented that about both Andrea and Amy when he and Merle had first gotten acquainted with the young women at the quarry, the two chatty sisters basically ignoring the brothers and making their snide comments about uneducated backwater guys who preferred hunting squirrels for stew over fishing for mackerel and yellowtail from their daddy's 30-foot Bayliner on the Atlantic. 

And then Andrea had made that snotty comment about him not knowing what the word “observant” meant when she'd (wrongly) assumed that the group of men in the Atlanta nursing home had been overrun by walkers rather than murdered. They'd exchanged some choice words, and Daryl dished back everything that Andrea had offered up to him in terms of insults. No, they hadn't started out as the most compatible of lovers or the dearest of friends.

Over time, though, he'd earned her respect and acceptance, and she his. Neither were strangers to putting up, shutting up, taking up arms in the direst of situations, and toughing it out for the good of the group. Both loved the group, and both ached in their own ways when Andrea became separated from him and the rest before Rick led their band of merry survivors to the prison. When Andrea turned up in Woodbury with her new pal Michonne, herself a tough warrior, Daryl recoiled upon learning how the women were exploited, beaten, violated, and paraded around the walker arena for the Governor's sick sense of jollies. Yet, neither she nor Michonne called attention to what had happened to them, and once integrated into the prison, Andrea and her friend pulled their weight like everyone else. 

Gone was the suicidal mess of a woman who grieved for her dead sister at the expense of trashing the feelings of those around her. Gone was the snobby Miami lawyer who thought her intellect far outmatched everyone else's (and hell, a law degree from an accredited fucking Florida university didn't mean Jack Shit when a herd of walkers was about to gouge one's intestines out of his or her body). In her place was the strong, selfless, big-hearted Andrea he watched bloom before his eyes and grew to love, more than he'd had any other woman in his past life.

He had been with plenty of women in the old life, but he found them to be as shallow and transparent as the stream in which he washed his bolts on that awful day with T-Dog, when Rick had learned about the ultimate fate of his wife and infant daughter. Some of his old girlfriends had truly loved him, but he hadn't returned the favor―never figured he was honest-to-God what they would've wanted, felt he had too much baggage. Other women used him as a shoulder to cry on, a quick lay, a way to “slum” and brag to their girlfriends about his redneck sexual prowess over martinis in whatever trendy Atlanta bar they frequented. He made do without all of them in the long run. Whatever happened to them, anyway? He hoped, at least, they were alive and hanging on...

But Andrea, she was different. He had never told her the words, “I love you,” because as he'd learned in life, words were cheap, but the human heart and human actions spoke volumes and echoes. He knew she loved him, cared for him, listened to him, accepted him the way he fucking was and always would be. She was the first person who loved him, and whom he knew he loved back without needing to say a damn thing about it.

And she had been separated from him, again. This time was so much more painful than the first, but he wouldn't say why, couldn't. He was with a grieving widow and father, and a young boy who'd lost his mother and sister, and he was damn well sure that their certainty beat his uncertainty any day of the week and twice on Sunday. 

Daryl knew Andrea was a strong woman and could withstand almost anything. He didn't know, to be honest, if he'd ever see her again. He wished he would, but knew in the end that his wishes meant shit. Even if he never saw her again, he knew that she would survive this crap and hopefully, if painfully, get over even him. That was more than he could say about himself, for now...

Andrea

She had a tiny piece of Daryl inside of her, and she was going to protect it with her life if she had to.

It occurred to her as she stood at the hotel bathroom's vanity, staring back at her reflection with the rifle slung over her shoulder like a guitar―an instrument of death on the shoulders of a woman harboring a new life―that she hadn't seen what she'd looked like since she and her friends escaped the chaos of the prison. Mirrors and vanities had until now been a quaint memory, and photographs were a mysterious invention from a bygone modern era. 

Her face was more angular, more drawn, and yet somewhat harder than she'd remembered it, and her hair had grown longer and unkempt, full of snarls and kinks, without the benefit of daily brushing. She thought she looked like a pregnant homeless person. No wonder Maggie and Glenn had cut theirs so short.

Beneath the extra-large men's Tommy Bahama T-shirt she had scavenged on the small group's last supply run to the abandoned Wal-Mart, the slightest hint of a baby bump sloped forward. She was starting to show, and she was starting to feel the quickening―the telltale flutters she'd read about in the softcover copy of What to Expect When You're Expecting that Glenn had mined for her in that same Wal-Mart. 

She had never felt the desperate fire to live so acutely as she had now. She could only imagine that Lori must've felt the same fire those months before she delivered Judith, up to the day her daughter was born―and perhaps even moreso after. She wished she'd had the chance to talk with Lori more, learn from her, learn what it was like to be a mother and a good one. Andrea could shoot a gun and dig ditches and build sustaining walls with the best of the protectors, but hosting her body to a child, protecting her child―Daryl's child―their child―was a new thing entirely.

In addition to being pregnant in the first place, giving birth was a mystery to her, one that she both dreaded and felt a bewildered sense of fascination and curiosity at experiencing for the first time. She was there when Lori had given birth to Judy, without the aid of surgical equipment or even an epidural, relying only on the nurse Alice's help and what millennia upon millennia had given women in the way of natural abilities to bring forth children into the world. If―if―she and Maggie and Glenn were lucky enough to find another relatively safe community that had a doctor, a nurse, perhaps even a safer Wal-Mart that didn't have walkers to dodge, so that she could have formula, diapers, rattles, or any of the other luxuries that Lori and Rick hadn't been able to have for their baby girl. 

Just then, her child, that miniscule spark of a child fluttered inside of her. The one Daryl had put there that night in the shower was all Andrea had of him, and she was determined to protect that part of Daryl at all costs if it came down to that.

“Walkers ain't got nothin' on me,” she told her reflection in her best hillbilly voice. She wondered if all of those cliches about a mother being the most ferocious animal known to Earth were true. She cocked the hammer on her rifle, gave her reflection's eyes a steely glare, and then stopped wondering.

Daryl

[Daryl gets separated from his group during a run-in with a herd of walkers; makes for Virginia on his own.]

As the sun sank into the west side of the forest, the sky cast shades of deepening reds, blues, and violets between the trees' branches, growing barer with the coming of winter. It would be nightfall soon, and Daryl knew he'd have to settle upon a clearing, preferably near water, to pitch his tent for one. According to the coordinates on his compass and the trail map he'd pilfered at the abandoned visitor's center earlier that afternoon, he was close to at least three sheltered campsites on the backcountry. However, after walking in what felt like circles and passing the same broken aspen stump for the fifth time, he was ready to give up on the hunt for what passed for civilized shelter, tuck himself into his bivouac, and call it a night.

The past couple of weeks or so had proven to be an endurance test in a new kind of "roughing it," but this evening was the first night that he'd found himself without any kind of an abandoned shelter of some sort. Across the rural parts of Georgia, along with the deepest of the Blue Ridge Mountains, he'd been lucky enough to get a night's worth of sleep in a forgotten campground, a dilapidated factory building, or a boarded-up single wide that still contained a musty sofa or two. Tonight, though, was his first test as a fugitive in the true wild.

Ahead of him, he could see the water of a small river rushing past, and let out a sigh of relief. "Finally," he murmured to himself. It had been a damn lonely two or so weeks, and he had become accustomed to carrying on even the most mundane one-word conversations with himself. Grinning, he forged forward to stake out a good site to set up camp. 

He remembered this much from his youth when camping with his buddies in the North Georgia Mountains: it was never a good idea to camp next to a swollen stream or river. Yes, he wanted to be close to water, but not right on top of it. He figured a good fifty or so yards away would do. He eyeballed the distance and knelt on the ground, letting his backpack and his Remington Model 750 hunting rifle case roll off his back with a grunt. Back in Athens about a week ago, he had stolen both the backpack and whatever myriad of camping supplies he could fit into it from a blown-out sporting-goods store. The Remington rifle was his own―he'd managed to snatch it out of his gun cabinet as he fled his townhouse―and he figured he'd need it for self-defense in the short-term and hunting in the long-term. 

The rifle only weighed around eight pounds, and compared to the backpack's hastily-stolen assortment of contraptions, its weight was trivial. After days of hiking through the mountains and finding his way onto the Appalachian Trail with what seemed like primitive, 19th-century navigation tools, the backpack had only seemed to accumulate in weight. At this point, he felt as if he were dumping an elephant from his back, and he was glad to be free of it, if only for tonight. Tomorrow would start the trek again, so he'd relish the rest.

The Kamp-Rite one-man tent was surprisingly easy to set up, and that was a good thing―tonight was the first chance he had to actually use it, given he'd had other means of shelter to protect him for the nights before. One thing he didn't have patience for were things that didn't work properly, or things that took too long to install. Before the madness, he'd made himself a comfortable enough living so that he could hire others to set up, install, or fix the things in his life that didn't work to his liking. Now, however, he supposed he had to just deal with the shit that didn't work properly―but he was glad the tent was easy to pitch.

The flashlights were another matter. He was dismayed to unzip one of the side pockets of his pack and discover that, yes, he'd managed to grab two flashlights in the rush through the sporting-goods store, but no, he didn't remember to get any batteries for them.

"Well, fuck," he spat out, to the trees and the river and no one else he knew of in the whole damned forest. The sky was darkening rapidly, and a mere sliver of a moon peeked through the dark violet to remind him that he'd need more to see in this wilderness besides starlight. 

"I could light a fire," he suggested to himself, and then dug through the rest of his backpack in a mild panic. What else had he forgotten to grab that would be useful in his rush to get the hell in and get the hell out of the abandoned sporting-goods place? He knew he had his mess kit―that was good; he'd need something to cook his remaining can of tortellini soup―but then he'd need a fire to actually cook the damned soup. He found some hand warmer packets he'd grabbed out of instinct and experience―the Appalachian Mountains could get bitterly cold this time of year, but they wouldn't cook soup or produce any light.

When his fingers touched the boxes of waterproof matches, he laughed in relief. "It's the little things," he said aloud as he lit a test match, and then froze as he remembered something.

During daylight, he had opened the trail map and read its notes as he hiked, just for anything to kill the time as all of the late-autumn foliage and wildlife scenery stopped looking interesting after the first twenty miles or so. He read the warnings about park regulations and prohibitions with a bit of dark amusement; as if the National Park Service even gave a shit anymore whether someone took a crap in the woods and didn't bury it with at least six inches of soil. As if the National Park Service even existed anymore.

One notice caught his eye, though. It was the warning about black bears, and what to do if a bear noticed or tried to attack. Daryl tried to recall the finer points of the black-bear warning: keep a safe distance between yourself and the bear; don't try to approach the bear, especially between a mother and her cubs; don't leave open containers of food. It was the part about the injuries, however, that gave Daryl pause.

The trail map's warning had stated that most injuries from bear attacks were minor, but how much was "most," and what kinds of injuries could be worse than just "minor"? Help protect others, the trail map advised, report all bear incidents to a park ranger immediately. As if any park rangers were likely in the damned national park at all anymore. Even if he was injured enough to seek out and find a park ranger, what if the park ranger turned him in? He couldn't take chances on testing anyone's loyalty, definitely not in this part of the country, and trust anyone he didn't know with his life. And if he was injured more seriously than just "minor," he estimated that he was miles away from even a remote rural medical center or hospital, if one was even functioning or wasn't well over its capacity limit already. He could try to wait out his injury and self-treat with the first-aid kit he'd scavenged from the sporting-goods store, but he could become infected, and die slowly and painfully in the woods...

"Oh, for Christ's sakes, Daryl, stop being such a fucking girl," he reprimanded himself. If he had the luxury to have planned ahead, he might have been able to think about these risks before deciding to play rugged-individualist and tough it out on the Trail. Yet, he didn't have that luxury, so he was on his own. Wasn't that what he was brought up to believe, was that everyone was, in the end, on their own? His life was and always had been his responsibility, and there was no fucking point in worrying himself to death about things that―at this point―he couldn't control. He hated that feeling, but he surmised that those were the fucking breaks.

"Well, I guess I'd better not have an 'incident' with a bear," he said to himself glumly.

Safely―or at least feeling the illusion of it―inside his one-man tent, Daryl burrowed himself fully clothed into his bivvy, leaving his arms free to rifle through his backpack's contents while lying on his side. He'd been lucky enough to uncover a small key light he must have stashed along with a couple of Power Bars into one of the backpack's side pockets, so he was able to use that to see what he was doing as he sorted through his bounty. It was now the dead of night, and he was thankful for even the tiniest bit of light that the device gave him. 

He took careful inventory of his goods: canteen, compass, mess kit, two flashlights (unfortunately sans batteries), hand warmers, the lone can of tortellini soup, five Power Bars (minus one that he was going to have for dinner tonight), one pair of gloves, two boxes of Remington ammo (he was damned lucky to find that), three pairs of winter socks, the four boxes of waterproof matches that he was elated to find, the first-aid kit, a hunting knife and leather sheath, and a book on hunting deer and cooking venison. The last item he had taken on a whim―an idle curiosity for which, even in his panicked moments of escape, evasion, and duress, he managed to see a potential use at a later time. He skimmed through some of the opening pages until his eyelids grew heavy and he fell into a light sleep. Before he drifted off, he listened semi-consciously for any sounds of large animals, such as black bears, moving around outside his tent, but all he could hear was the water of the river rushing, and otherwise, silence. Thankfully, silence.

Andrea

In the hours in which she'd been keeping watch from the motel's rooftop, she would normally have thought it was beautiful and peaceful to look at the ocean, but not anymore. Now, it was simply depressing.

Back in the pre-walker days, she'd make the drive from Orlando to visit her parents in Fernandina Beach and walk the coastline by their house with her parents and their dog, Sadie. The beaches were full of life back then―joggers running in pairs, kids building sandcastles and laughing as they chased each other in the surf, teenagers playing volleyball as they showed off their tanned bodies in their swim trunks and string bikinis. Moving images that were embedded in her memory as scenes from a different world that was no longer. 

Before Glenn and the older couple from the adjacent suite had roamed onto the sand, the no doubt once-populated coastline was a desert, and the empty ocean that stretched out beyond was a vast seascape of nothing. No ocean liners, no yachts, no people in canoes or surfboards. This motel and the other nearly-vacant lodges, souvenir shops, and beachfront bars up and down the coast―perhaps empty, perhaps not―spoke only whispers of a sleepy beachtown life that didn't exist anymore.

If Daryl had been there on the rooftop with her, they'd talk about the old days. Reminisce about their favorite burger joints and rock bands and hangouts and sports teams and movies―all of the things that had filled their spare time and their lives with friends and joy. 

They'd also talk about politics, social issues, and global affairs, on which Andrea was initially surprised to learn Daryl even had an opinion at all. Not too many people in their group were aware of Daryl's raw intelligence on these matters, or even his sheer wordliness―“Fuckin' Israelis 'n Palestinians shootin' the fuckin' crap out of each other on a daily basis. Shit, if the walkers didn't get them, they probably killed each other over the fuckin' postage stamps of land they're fightin' about. Jesus Christ. Sadat and Rabin got their asses shot over that shit??”―but at the end of the day, he more than anyone in the group was Andrea's intellectual equal. 

Once upon a time, he'd told her at the prison, he'd gone to community college to better his lot in life, to hopefully get his ass out of Trailer Park Macon and scrape together enough money to transfer to UGA as a junior majoring in archeology, long a passion of his since he'd seen Raiders of the Lost Ark reruns on a UHF channel on a grainy 9-inch TV screen in his daddy's single-wide. 

Though Daryl gave Andrea the ostensible reason that he eventually couldn't make enough money to pursue his goals, Andrea suspected that his brother's negative influence was the culprit at hand, and she sensed the lingering resentment in his conversations about, and with, Merle when the older man came to live with them at the prison.

Daryl wanted more than his brother wanted for him. Daryl was more, but his brother wouldn't let him be who he wanted to be. Nevertheless, the younger Dixon didn't have to prove anything to Andrea of his worthiness, because she already knew. She missed him. 

She missed Daryl more than ever. She wanted Daryl. She wanted him to put his hand on her quickening belly and feel the life he'd put there. She wanted to put her arms around him and be a family with him, now that the two had lost all the family that they knew. She wanted most of all to know that he was still alive, somewhere on the way north...

She was relieved when Maggie climbed up the fire ladder to the rooftop to relieve her from her post. “My turn,” Maggie told Andrea, taking the rifle for her shift. “What's Glenn doing out there?” She pointed to Glenn in the distance, on the Atlantic shoreline. He was struggling to don his legs in the same rubber hip boots Andrea had taken from the abandoned tackle shop.

“Shelli and John are giving Glenn some more lessons in pompano fishing,” Andrea told her as she watched Glenn finally get himself into the hip boots and follow the older couple as they waded into the Atlantic with their fishing gear.

Maggie chuckled and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, good luck with that, Glenn!” She and Andrea giggled. “Oh, well, I give him an A for effort. This'll be entertaining to watch.”

“Sure beats staring at the outstretch of nothing,” Andrea told her ruefully. 

Maggie patted her shoulder. “Well, you're off now, so I'll keep an eye on my husband and his new fishing teachers. You go downstairs and get some rest. I made some milk for you.”

“Powdered milk, my favorite,” Andrea told her wryly, but added, “Thanks, Maggie.” She and Maggie hadn't always been the best of friends, especially since the incident back at the farm with Beth, but their mutual experiences at the prison, and now as nomads whose new home was North Myrtle Beach for as long as they could stay there without the walkers herding up and chasing them out, had brought them closer together.

“Have a good rest,” Maggie said, donning the cowboy hat Andrea had left on the chair for her, sitting down and resting the rifle on one knee as she watched John and Shelli give Glenn fishing lessons.

Daryl

Daryl stepped over the piles of broken glass and around the mined cash registers. He didn't expect he'd find much, if any, cash in the registers, and he doubted the cash would be much use to him at this point. Credit card receipts and other forms of payment would be absolutely useless, but even with cash, he wouldn’t want to buy anything out of a store anyway, even if he did find a functioning one in a relatively stable part of the region he was in. 

The abandoned store's shelves were almost completely bare, having likely long been stripped free of any useful foodstuffs and other items useful for survival. Daryl had always fancied himself as being reasonably resourceful, so perhaps he could make do with the remaining items were in the store, whatever those items might be. He scanned the first beige-painted aisle he saw―completely empty. The refrigerator and freezer wall shelves, long warmed or defrosted to room temperature now that the electricity was dead, were cleared out as well. That was fine by Daryl. He had seen enough decomposed meats, vegetables, and fruit that was rotted until it had turned black; milk that had coagulated into stinking yellow blocks of yogurt; and cheese that had molded over to make penicillin to last him a lifetime. Non-perishable foods would be best―and hey, he thought, maybe he'd even find himself a can opener.

The next aisle in the store bore some remaining items here and there, but they were fairly useless. Daryl counted a few bottles of ketchup, some containers of mustard, and a lone jar of mayonnaise. As much as his stomach growled from the lack of a decent meal over the past few weeks, Daryl didn't think ketchup-covered mayo with a few drizzles of mustard constituted as a tasty or even substantial meal. He did spot a travel-sized packet of face tissues under the shelf with the mayo and bent down to snatch it up. He stuck it in his jacket's small side pocket. It would come in handy as toilet paper for the rare times in the woods that he squatted down to take a dump (taking shits were rare, given the relative lack of food other than Power Bars and the occasional hunted rabbit or caught fish). Not being able to wipe his asshole after a Number Two, even in his recent and current dire circumstances, was a hygiene annoyance that he’d rather do without. And he'd learned his lesson when he was eight not to use any more poison oak as toilet paper.

He rounded the corner in the back of the store to the next aisle, and let out a chuckle when he saw a lone four-pack of sangria-flavored wine coolers at the bottom of the booze fridge. "They even cleaned out the damned forty-ouncers," he said aloud, thinking that, even in desperate warzones where people were fighting for their lives, it was human nature to bask in the creature comforts of life every now and then.

Recoiling briefly from the stench that hit him, he opened the door to the booze fridge and picked up the wine coolers. Why the fuck not? he thought as he unslung his backpack, set it on the ground, and proceeded to wedge each of the wine coolers in between some fabric folds of his bivy to cushion the bottles from clinking against each other and breaking. He would enjoy even some lukewarm sangria (or what passed for it) on his next camping stop, wherever that might be. The weather was cool enough, so that if he were near a creek or river or such, he could chill them for a bit in the shoreline water before imbibing himself. And the bottles were screw tops, so he wouldn’t even need a bottle opener.  Even if they did break on his trek, at least his bivy would smell nice, for a little while, anyway. He was beginning not to give a fuck about his situation, because he figured it couldn’t suck any more than it already did.

After he returned his backpack onto his shoulders, he proceeded to the third aisle. In it were shelves that were mostly bare, except for a conspicuous section of shelving that had a neat, almost untouched section of housecleaning supplies and a token amount of personal-care items and car accessories. It was the kind of hodgepodge assortment of convenience-store items that, in normal times, would constitute the "bare necessities" that someone stopping into a 7-Eleven or other such store would rush in to pick up if the supermarket were too inconvenient. Now, especially if the main objective of a passing-by refugee or war partisan were to grab only food or water, these items could easily be unnecessary luxuries.

But not to Daryl. He unslung his backpack again and set it on the floor, getting ready to do a little shopping. He spotted a few cardboard clips of clothespins and tucked them into a side compartment of his pack. The five boxes of matches were like finding gold―he slid them handily into another nook. He couldn’t believe no one had claimed those yet. And presto―he found the can opener he wanted. It was a rudimentary, very boring and basic manual can opener that doubled as a beer bottle opener, but it worked for him. Now, he could enjoy his tortellini soup, finally. 

His backpack still had a bit of room on top, so he added a set of legal pads and ballpoint pens to his stash. "You never know when I can get the urge to write a diary of my experiences in the wild, just like Thoreau or that kid who froze to death in Alaska," he murmured to himself as he looked for more empty spaces in his pack. He stuffed in two sticks of mens' deodorant, the lone pack of Wet Ones that remained, and a single bar of LAVA soap. He never thought he would value cleanliness so much―after all, he was Daryl Fucking Dixon―but he so craved a hot shower in the worst way.

“Maybe that's what having a girlfriend does to you,” he said aloud to himself as he packed his goods, trying to retain a sense of sanity in his solitude—yet another thing to which he should've been accustomed, being a born loner, but since his kinship with the group and with Rick, Carl, T-Dog and Michonne in particular, he felt lonely without anyone to talk to. “Now I'm becoming a pussy-whipped gentleman of good hygiene,” he added in a note of self-mocking.

He managed to squeeze in a couple of disposable men's razor packs, and wanted to pack some laundry detergent in the off-chance that he was able to wash his filthy Mountain Man clothes, but his backpack was starting to get heavy. He didn't want to be stopping every hour to rest because he’d buckle under the weight of his backpack, now that it was growing as he was shrinking. In the three weeks’ time that he’d reckoned he'd been separated from the rest of the group, he'd had to pull in his belt buckle from the worn-out second hole from the buckle all the way down to the hole farthest away from the buckle. Without the benefit of a scale, he figured that subsisting on little more than Power Bars and the occasional fish or rabbit had cost him twenty or so pounds. "Best diet ever," he said to himself grimly as he zipped up his pack, re-slung it, and scanned the store for any essentials for which he'd kick himself later if he left it there. After finding nothing, he hit the road again. Judging by the sun’s eastward position in the sky, he would have a long trek ahead of him.

The land’s topography changed dramatically as he left the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains and crossed into the plains of West Virginia. He wanted to steer clear of cities like Lexington, because Lord knew that they were still burning, exploding war zones. He knew it would take him longer to take the roundabout routes away from the interstates, but it would be worth it to avoid as many walkers―particularly the ones who could overrun him, his crossbow and his Remington―and get to Virginia safely. Maybe he'd find Rick and the others...and maybe―maybe―he'd find Andrea, too.

Without the benefit of the mountain woods to conceal himself, Daryl felt naked and exposed in the open plains. Spotted here and there with abandoned farmlands and what looked like some rural country roads in the distance, barren Kentucky land stretched out before him as he trudged forward with the help of his compass and Southeastern U.S. map.

The sun was starting to slip in the West, and bands of pink and white marred the perfect sky blue. Except for the night in the Daniel Boone Forest, Daryl had been lucky for the past couple of weeks in that he hadn't gotten completely soaked to his skin in rain, and the weather had, for the most part, been beautiful. Almost painfully beautiful―it contrasted so much with what had raged on in the cities and towns across the U.S. and split the country into two, and three, and four.

Once he got to Virginia, though, Daryl knew that would change fairly rapidly. Even a Southern boy like he understood that, with November whispered the impending dead of winter. Already, the farther North Daryl hiked, the cooler he could feel it growing, especially after having been in the Appalachians for so many days. He only hoped that the homestead still had its generator, and that the homestead itself wasn't completely demolished by the time he got there. 

On the maps at the abandoned Stearns Ranger Center, the Daniel Boone National Forest looked huge. Intimidatingly huge, especially after the foray in the Blue Ridge Mountains, which by comparison were a piece of cake. As he scanned through the general park brochure, what caught Daryl's eye at first was the phrase, “over 707,000 acres of mostly rugged terrain.” Jesus, how long is it going to take me to scale that? he thought, the weight of his backpack suddenly heavier.

He was tempted to waste a day and hunker down in the Ranger Center itself. It appeared to have no walkers; the doors were still bolted shut and the windows were unbroken. Though the power was off, Daryl wondered if a generator-powered security system were active, and possibly keeping the geeks away. The center itself was a pleasing, albeit weathered, one-story building in the form of a large country home, and through the dusty windows, Daryl could see furniture and a refuge from the crisp morning air. His watch, though, read 10:21 in the morning, and the sun hadn't begun to reach its apex in the sky. He needed to make the most use of his hiking time during the daylight, and this time of year, the daylight was scarce. 

He made it his goal to get to the Bee Rock campground by nightfall, and the following day to the S-Tree or Turkey Foot campgrounds in the dead-center of the Daniel Boone Forest. On the park map, they both looked to be in the center of the forest. If he could make it to any of those camps by both nights―and if they weren't already overrun by walkers―Daryl felt he would be in good shape to set up a camp by himself. As much as he was loathing his self-imposed solitary confinement while he camped, he had to remain vigilant for geeks. Trusting any moment of the illusion of safety could end his life.

Stuffing the camp maps and the brochures into his backpack's ever-thickening left side pouch, he slung up his pack and hoofed it toward the first trail head he saw. Glancing behind him, he took one last look at the Stearns Ranger Center before he entered the seclusion of the forest. The American flag, lonely on its post as it flapped in the brisk morning breeze, was all that waved him goodbye.

He followed the scenic trail along the Big South Fork National River, taking a break at a Yahoo Falls picnic area to fire down a couple of his Power Bars and drink whatever remained from his canteen. The falls area was built up with lookouts and bridges to get a closer view of the scenery, but Daryl didn't have the luxury for any sightseeing. After refilling his canteen with the fountain water at the picnic area (he was amazed it still operated), he plunked a couple of water-purifying tablets into the canteen and continued his long hike. 

Amused to find a lake named after his ultimate destination, Daryl was tempted to stop by Lake Cumberland for a look on his way to Bee Rock Camp, but the slipping of the sun toward the West urged him forward. 

Daryl

“Shit.”

One thing Daryl hadn't counted on that night was the rain. The torrential, freezing, horrible, pissing rain. 

When he had set up his one-man tent under the picnic shelter, he had supposed that was enough to protect him from any light sprinkles or showers that might have hit the campground that night. Without the benefit of weather reports on the news or the Internet, the worst he'd assumed about the telltale gray clouds in the sky―not cumulonimbus; he'd recognized those as thunderclouds from early in his youth, when he was afraid of the thunder and learned to dread them hanging overhead―but bleak and gray all the same. Nevertheless, he didn't expect that a downpour would come, and worse, would stream diagonally―in the direction of his tent.

Having fallen asleep several hours ago (by his estimate), he awoke with the realization that he was already soaked to his skin, the chill of the water eating at his joints. Outside, he heard the rainfall drumming on the concrete slab and saw a curtain of water enveloping his small tent. In the perimeters of the tent's close quarters, an inch or two of standing, icy water surrounded his bivvy, which itself was fully drenched.

“Shit,” he said again, this time more fully awake and able to absorb his discomfort. Unprotected on all sides with just the awning above his tent, the picnic shelter had failed to keep him dry. 

Grabbing the flashlight next to him, Daryl wriggled out of the sleeping bag and unzipped his tent, bursting out of it in one disgusted move. He flipped the flashlight's switch on, but no light came on. The water  had killed the batteries. Shit, and a fuck. 

He kicked away the worthless piece of tarp that clearly wasn't waterproof. Fuck, why didn't I get a waterproof one? he thought, his subconscious self quickly reminding his conscious one that he had scouted through the sporting-goods store in a hurried rush. 

Under one of the flimsy picnic tables, their tabletops being the only dry structures except for a spattering of drops from cracks in the awning, was his backpack, its flap now lopsided and sopping with rainwater. Fumbling around in the dark, he tore into the pack's main compartment, laying out item after damp item on the picnic table. His PowerBars were in plastic-foil wrap, so they were protected. The mess kit, the can of soup he hadn't yet been able to open, and the pocket knife were fine. With relief, he found that the smaller flashlight, kept somewhat dry by the clothes and assortment of other items around it, still worked.

With the tiny bit of a spotlight in the black, rainy night, he saw his gun case next to the backpack. The Remington, thank God, was still secure in its watertight case, dotted with droplets of water that gleamed in the flashlight's halo. At least he had the foresight to buy a watertight gun case back in the day, when he could plan better and think more clearly. Now, he was on the run, and everything else in the pack that he could see with the trivial glow of the flashlight was soaked. His socks, dry underwear, change of clothes―drenched. 

He clenched his fists as he hurled out a few choice expletives, thinking of his friends and their safety, and most of all, Andrea. When would this madness end? Feeling as if he were going batshit insane, here he was in the motherfucking middle of the Daniel Boone Forest, freezing his soaking ass off.

“And how long am I gonna have to stay here 'till all this shit dries?” he said aloud in a hoarse voice, moments after he'd stopped his shouting. Resigned to the reality of his situation, he bit the handle end of the small flashlight like a cigar so he could use both of his hands to pull up the heavy wet tent and bivvy from the concrete. He then draped them over one of the drier picnic tables, the one with the least number of stray drops that had seeped down from the awning's leaky roof. 

Dejected, he perched both the backpack and the gun next to the backpack's contents on another table and peeled off all of his wet clothes, down to his briefs. He didn't think anyone else was around to notice if he were to strip himself buck-naked, but he felt more comfortable mentally with even his damp underpants on, lest another wandering refugee were to stroll by in the early morning and see him in his inglorious nakedness. Sitting cross-legged on top of one of the remaining dry picnic tables under the awning, he figured all he could do was keep his skin dry and wait for the storm to pass and morning to come. There was no way he could think of sleeping, not in this cold, not in forty-degree weather (or so it felt) and wearing only his underwear.

He gave out a raspy cough, feeling its reverb from his chest. What if I die out here from hypothermia? he worried. Years later, when the madness had cleared up, whenever that would be, some forest ranger or hikers would happen upon his skeletal remains and wonder what had happened to this poor idiot.

He forced those thoughts out of his mind. He couldn't plague himself with that shit now. There was nothing he could do about his present circumstances, except sit on top of the flimsy damned picnic table and try not to cry his eyes out.

The rain stopped shortly before dawn. When the sky lightened and the sun began to peek through the forest's dew-covered branches, Daryl was still awake, sitting in a cross-legged position and hugging himself to keep his half-nude body somewhat warm, or at least less freezing. His shivering breath made steam as he struggled to stay somewhat temperate―and awake―in the near-winter morning. One thing he didn't want to do was lose consciousness and never wake up again. He let out a few loud, raspy coughs. That was all he needed, was to find himself sick in the middle of this soaking-wet middle of nowhere.

He tried all manners of mental games to keep himself awake, warm, and somewhat stimulated as well as beat the impossible monotony of air-drying in the morning cold. First was playing some mental word games; second was thinking of Andrea and envisioning her as safe. He knew it would do little good and might have been wishful thinking only in his near-petrified freezing state, but it did occupy his mind for a bit.

The sun was starting to rise above the treetops, and Daryl was just beginning to consider drying off a Power Bar to fill his empty stomach, when he noticed a couple of people―a man and a woman―emerging from a trailhead, their attire much more appropriate for the climate than what Daryl had on, and their backpacks appearing to be fully dry. His first instinct was that they were really walkers and he was hallucinating them to be living human beings, but then he saw that they were talking to each other and pointing at him―not grunting with rotten teeth bared, and not stumbling toward him with their ravenous, unquenchable rotting corpses. Yes, they were human.

His heartbeat increasing as if on autopilot, Daryl saw the man in the couple pointing at him and motioning to the woman to follow him. As the couple drew closer to him, he noticed that they looked to be in their mid-fifties and either of Native American or Hispanic descent. He could hear the woman speak to the man rapidly in what he recognized as Spanish, although he knew few words of it, aside from “hola,” “muchos gracias,” and “taco.”

Daryl's guard went down upon realizing the couple was probably not a threat. “Hola,” he greeted nervously as he stood up, his arms locked in the crossed position in which they'd been for hours. Realizing he was wearing only his underpants, Daryl felt mortally embarrassed.

Wearing a look of consternation as he moved cautiously toward Daryl, the man in the couple returned with a cordial but nervous “hola,” and then began rattling off a number of sentences in fluent Spanish that Daryl couldn't begin to decipher. Equally as proficient in her native tongue, the woman chimed in, making hand gestures to both Daryl and the man who was apparently her husband. The inflection in her voice as she glanced at Daryl signaled that she was asking him a question.

Not knowing how to respond, and scanning his exhausted mind for the Spanish translation of “Do you speak English?”, all Daryl could manage was a hoarse, “English?”

The couple stared at him blankly, then the woman asked in faltering tones, “No habla español?”

Daryl shook his head, affirming, “No. I'm sorry.” He wasn't sure why he'd just apologized to this couple for not being able to speak another country's language―his brother had long cursed “those lousy Mexicans” crossing their country's borders in the years preceding the virus outbreak―but he felt apologetic all the same. For once, he felt like the intruder on their peaceful space, interrupting their late autumn migration in his underwear.

“I speak – little bit – English,” the man offered with a nod, “I am Jorge. My wife – Sonia.”

党Nice to meet you both,” Daryl said, nodding back. This is so freaking surreal, he thought, introducing himself to a couple of whose community his brother regularly demonized. But who gives a shit about what my brother thinks? he told himself, reminding himself that his brother was dead anyway and no longer had any control over what Daryl did or thought. Only the couple, who'd most likely spent most of their years in much warmer climates than Kentucky in the late fall, had the good sense to keep themselves dry and dress for the weather, while Daryl on the other hand felt himself quite the idiot in underpants.

“You need clothes?” Jorge asked Daryl cautiously.

党If...if you have any to spare,” Daryl replied, feeling guilty for being on the receiving end of this couple's generosity during this time of every-man-for-himself crisis. 

党I have sweater,” Jorge said, quickly rummaging through his own knapsack. “Too big. Took from shop. You take.” He brought forth a large blue hooded sweatshirt with a touristy woods screen print and KENTUCKY emblazoned in bold vinyl lettering. Offering it to Daryl, the man gave him a nervous grin.

党Thank you,” Daryl told him, grateful for the man's good graces. He put it on over his naked torso and immediately felt warmer. If only he had a spare pair of sweatpants, Daryl would be set.

Sonia then spoke to Jorge rapidly in Spanish, lifting a rolled sleeping bag off the top of her own pack. Jorge argued with her a minute in Spanish, with his wife rebutting him and evidently convincing him to relent. Sonia held forth the rolled sleeping bag to Daryl. “You take,” she said.

“Oh, no,” Daryl said. He'd already felt guilty for taking the man's sweatshirt, even if it was, as Jorge claimed, too large for the other man to wear. He motioned feebly to decline, but thought it would be nice to have something to cover his legs for a little while, till his own clothes dried in the new day's sun. Somehow, sometime, in the chilling air.

党You take,” she insisted with a smile.

“Are you sure you don't need it?” Daryl asked.

党We share.” The woman pointed at herself and her husband, and then at the sleeping bag that was on top of Jorge's own pack. Daryl wondered if sharing the sleeping bag would actually be a benefit to the couple, using their own body heat to warm each other in the cold nights, but that was beside the point.

党Well, thank you,” Daryl said again. He got up and walked to his own still-wet clothes that he'd hung on one of the beams of the picnic shelter. He rummaged through his damp jeans to fish out a couple of PowerBars still in their wrappers and held them out to the couple. “Please take these,” he said.

The couple looked at each other. Would two PowerBars―hardly even a day's full breakfast―even matter much to them? No doubt they were in as dangerous a situation as he was. 

Gingerly, the man reached forward to take the PowerBars. “No!” the woman protested, slapping his hand back and lecturing him in Spanish. 

Jorge counter-protested, this time, getting his wife to relent. He took the protein bars, pocketed them, and smiled at Daryl. “Muchos graçias, señor,” he said.

“You're welcome,” Daryl said, “and thank you.”

Sonia said something quietly to her husband in Spanish, and Jorge nodded. “We must go,” he told Daryl, “Good lucks.” The two waved to Daryl as they started toward the trailhead.

“Good luck to you, too,” Daryl replied, smiling as he waved them goodbye. He was already putting the blanket over his legs as he watched the couple make it to the trailhead and disappear beneath the trees.

Andrea

When she, Maggie, and Glenn finally pulled into the gates of Alexandria, they finally felt like they were home.

Their first priority was checking into the new community and going through the screening process, which turned out to be simpler than they thought. The Alexandria commissioner was the opposite of Phillip―democratic, welcoming, open, and a little bit more patrician without being patronizing.

“Each of you needs to earn your room and board by supplying us with a skill. What did you do in your previous lives?”

“Teacher,” Maggie answered.

“Lawyer,” Andrea offered.

“Pizza delivery guy,” Glenn quipped, to giggles from some of the residents who'd accompanied the small group to the commissioner's office.

“I'm sure we can find jobs for all of you,” the good-natured commissioner told them, “If you can navigate your way around town with a vehicle, we've got a role for you,” he said with a glance at Glenn.

“I have some skill with a gun,” said Andrea, showing the rifle she'd had slung around her back, “so I can help provide security, if that's needed as well.”

“Always. We have a doctor, too,” the commissioner of Alexandria told them, eyeing her growing belly, “Obstetrics is one of her specialties. She's delivered a few babies here.”

Maggie looked excitedly at Andrea, and then at Glenn. Andrea felt tears of gratefulness well in her eyes. Finally, they'd found a home.

“Andrea?? Maggie?? Glenn!” From inside another part of the office, Andrea heard a familiar voice. Holding a stack of intake papers was none other than Michonne.

“Oh, my God...” Along with the hugs from all three of them were immediate questions―how did she get there? Where were the others? Were they doing okay? 

“Daryl,” Andrea said, after they'd all had a chance to regroup and Michonne let them know that she, T-Dog, Rick, and Carl had all made it there safely. “Where's Daryl?”

“We don't know,” Michonne told her, “He got separated from us during a walker ambush.”

The glow on Andrea's face faded. 

Daryl

He swiped a pilfered Kanawha State Forest trail guide (he was getting to be a pro at this) and strode easily through the pleasant and level, although lonely, forest trails, and took county roads to reach what once was the town of Marmet. Skirting the Kanawha River, Marmet appeared to have once been a pleasant small town where everyone knew one another, but now it was desolate and all of its buildings and houses reduced to rubble. All that remained standing as far as Daryl could see were the McDonald's Golden Arches (the restaurant itself was leveled) and a gas-station sign, its vendor unrecognizable, given the sign light covering was blown out. Even the scenic expanse of the Kanawha waterfront couldn't save the town from looking irreparably blemished. 

Carefully, soberly, Daryl navigated his way around the chunks of concrete to look for a makeshift bridge, a raft, a canoe, anything that would help him to cross the Kanawha. In either direction, up and down the river, no bridge was to be found. 

"Well, I can't fucking wade across," he said aloud, looking at the stretch of river in front of him. He had no way of knowing how deep the water was, or how he could even manage swimming with his backpack weighing him down. As it was, it had seemed to grow heavier with each passing day on his long hike, to the point of him feeling as if he were giving three other grown men a piggy-back ride. Plus, he could imagine that, in the middle of November, the water had to be fucking freezing.

Stepping over more blocks of concrete and wood―and morosely, a handful of skeletal human remains that had been left ashore―Daryl skirted the river for a mile or two, hoping to catch a glimpse of a beached kayak or some other floatation device that someone had left behind before the city was blown to pieces. A pack of rats scared the shit out of him as they scurried across his path in single file. He must have scared the crap out of them first, but their presence as the only apparent living things left in the town besides him was startling.

As he rounded the river bend, he saw a boat ramp in front of him, and then a small marina. "Oh, sweet Jesus!" he said with a grin, thinking what he said must've been the most religious he had gotten in years. 

Most of the boats were either gone or damaged beyond use, but the lifeboat of a blown-apart fishing trawler still looked functional. Daryl took out his camping knife and cut the nylon cord, paddling the lifeboat across the river to the opposite side. On the shore opposite Marmet was nothing but grassland and a bit of garbage.

Which was mostly what Daryl encountered for the next five hours. He'd never been much of a singer, but he found himself singing the tunes from country artists to whom Merle had introduced him during the “good days”: Brad Paisley, Carrie Underwood, Zac Brown Band. Anything more to pass the time, and the monotony.

The skies darkened and the sun prepared to set when he reached a sign reading ELKVIEW CITY LIMIT: POP. 2140 along Country Road 47. The untouched landscape was dotted with darkened ranch-style houses and a one-pump gas station that had been long abandoned. Clearly, the ZA had left Elkview unscathed, but Daryl wondered if the houses in Elkview were actually empty, or if walkers were holing up in them as he planned to do in Virginia.

He took his crossbow out of its bag and held it at his side as he approached the closest house. He wondered if his Remington would be more effective in case he encountered a pack of walkers, but he didn't want to risk attracting a swarm of them with the gunshot noise. If he didn't find any geeks holed up in the joint, he figured he could squat in an empty house for the night, get a halfway decent night's sleep without needing to pitch his tent, and start fresh on his journey the next morning. He hadn't seen an actual bed since the ambush at the prison, and he was starting to feel his age, sleeping on the cold, damp ground, even the nice sleeping bag he'd found at the abandoned sporting-goods store. 

The first house's entrance as well as its windows were boarded up solid, and Daryl didn't feel like using the waning light of dusk trying to pry the damn things open. He moved onto the next and the third closest houses, which were similarly boarded up―the third house's owners being meticulous enough to use hurricane shutters for their windows. In West Fricking Virginia?? Daryl thought, somewhat amused. 

The fourth house wasn't boarded up, but its windows were broken out, and Daryl thought he could hear the scuttling of rats wandering the inside of the structure when he peeked inside. Not wanting to wake up with a huge rat covering his face, Daryl passed on that house and proceeded to the next one. 

He was in luck. Not only were the windows and door not boarded up, but the structure was intact, and after circling the small rambler two times, Daryl couldn't see any broken or blown-out windows. The doors were locked, so he scouted around the plain front yard for a hidden key and found one under the copper shell of a decorative garden turtle decoy. "Fucking awesome," he said aloud, as he opened the front door's deadbolt and proceeded inside.

Now that it was completely dark outside, Daryl took out his flashlight to find his way around the house after he shut―and locked―the door behind him. "Is anyone home?" he called out, purely of instinct, wondering then if perhaps the living owners still occupied the place and were on their way home from a hunting mission. However, no one answered, so it was safe to assume, he thought, that the owners had either fled or were no longer alive. He kept his crossbow at the ready in case the owners were no longer alive, yet still at home and ready to eat.

The musty smell and the thick layers of dust he caught with his flashlight on the living room coffee table and fireplace mantle told him this was probably not the case. Trying to relax, he set down his gun and unharnessed himself from his heavy backpack, sighing in relief as that weight was finally off his back. He scanned the rest of the modest living room to find a bookshelf of neatly-arranged, yet dust-covered, books and a sectional sofa and loveseat surrounding the coffee table. Framed pictures of unrecognizable faces, presumably family members in different poses and settings, hung on the walls around him.

His stomach rumbled, reminding him that he hadn't eaten anything since the Power Bar in Kanawha State Forest. He wondered what, if anything, the residents who'd fled from this house had left in the kitchen. It took a small corridor walk to get to the small kitchen, and the first thing Daryl did was open the refrigerator door. Recoiling at the rotten stench, Daryl quickly shut it again. Well, duh, asshole, he told himself, the electricity's probably been off for fucking months. Everything in the fridge and freezer was most likely inedible.

Pantry, he then thought, opening the cabinet doors to look for non-perishables. When he opened a tall cabinet door near the stove, he gasped in nearly orgasmic fervor at what he saw.

Before him were several rows containing unopened boxes of cereal, Triscuit crackers, and what looked like Asian-style almond cookies. On another shelf were Tetra-Paks of soup and tuna fish. After subsisting on Power Bars and water for the last several weeks, Daryl felt as if he had struck a culinary goldmine.

Almost gluttonously, he tore open the box of Triscuits and ate every last square sandwiched with a tuna fish filling. He was able to down a few handfuls of Cheerios and a couple of cookies before he started to reel with sickness. Carb overload, he thought, remembering it was the first time in a very long while that his stomach had the luxury of holding that much food in it. Catching his breath and resisting the urge to upchuck his dinner, he sat down on a Breuer chair at the small kitchen table and rested his head on his folded arms for a spell. What would make this night even more perfect, he suddenly thought, was something to drink.

After he felt well enough to stand up, he searched the cabinets again for some liquor and found some. He didn't want to drink so much that he would get himself too shit-canned to hike the next morning, but a lone cocktail would sure do him good. Hunting the remaining cabinets for a glass, he poured himself a neat vodka and tonic and returned to the living room to enjoy it. Before he drifted off to sleep, he wondered where the rest of his group was, and of course, if Andrea was doing okay.

Andrea

In Alexandria, a community of more than 200 people in a comfortable setting with a double-barricaded fence, Andrea's new role was to double as a daytime security guard for the morning, and to assist Rick, a constable for the makeshift police force, with civil and criminal processing. Being pregnant with a police officer's uniform, she often joked that she felt like Frances McDormand's character in Fargo.

The troubles the community had were minimal, although they did have to bust up and imprison a group of vigilantes who called themselves the Saviors in the town's small jail cells. The prisoners were all treated humanely and fed just like the others, but a 24-hour watch was kept over them by a small contingent of police officers.

Civilization was taking root in the community, and the Georgia survivors all played an active role in helping it to grow and flourish. Maggie helped to tend fresh fruits and vegetables in the town's greenhouse, while Glenn and Carl helped to keep the small grocery store stocked with fresh food. T-Dog and Michonne accompanied some of the other Alexandria residents on secured hunts in the nearby forests for deer and other sources of protein. The herds of walkers, they noticed, were getting thinner and thinner as time wore on, so the townspeople all wondered if the virus was finally running its course and the walkers were dying out on their own. 

Andrea had regular visits with Dr. Cloyd, who reassured her that the baby and she were healthy and should have a normal delivery. She'd only wished Daryl were there with her to welcome their new child. Where was he? she kept thinking, every time a kick or a pulse in her belly reminded her of him.

Daryl

When Daryl jumped over the wooden split-rail fence and trudged across the snow-covered plain to the snow-dusted rambler, he felt as if he should kneel on the ground and kiss it. More than three weeks had passed since he'd been separated from his group, and had since hidden in the Appalachians like a cornered rat. He was ready to kick his feet up in front of a dry fire and rest, for a change.

Wondering if he'd encounter any survivors on the property, Daryl first gave the thick wooden door a few loud knocks. The place was too rustic to have any kind of doorbell other than one of those old-school bells that were mostly for decorative purposes, with a leather cord dangling from the bell's base. He knew he was in relatively walker-free territory in the wintertime, but he still felt as if he should be on his guard and not call too much undue attention to himself by ringing the old-school doorbell with an obnoxious CLANG!

No one responded to his knocks, even after a few minutes of waiting in the nighttime cold, so Daryl began his hunt for a key and found one at the top of the doorframe. 

He had to blow his own warm breath into the frozen lock to allow the key to fit before he finally was able to unlock the door and let himself into the house. Like the suburban house in which he'd squatted for a night in West Virginia, the homestead was desolate and dusty in its abandonment. Even though technically, he was "safe," Daryl couldn't shake the feeling of having to constantly look over his shoulder―and he wondered if he ever would shake that awful feeling.

Finding his way around the great room and kitchen with his flashlight, he tried a few lights throughout the moonlit house, but none worked. He wondered if he'd have to tinker with the fuse box, wherever that was, or if the power outages were a byproduct of a larger, regional blackout. He thought he noticed a generator in the barn, but a search and setup of the damned thing would have to wait until morning. He was exhausted, and simply wanted to find a bed and sleep in it.

He never made it that far. After tossing his boulder of a backpack into a corner of the great room and peeling off his hat, gloves, and farm coat, he wrapped himself up in a cocoon with a crocheted blanket that was draped over the back of the great room's sofa and sank into the sofa, sleeping well into the next morning.

When he opened his eyes, it was light out, but overcast. By the feel of the outside air when he opened a door, he could tell that another snowfall was about to come soon. Time to hunt for and set up that generator, he told himself, but in the meantime, he'd better start up a fire. The woodburning stove at the head of the great room made a beautiful centerpiece, but an even more utilitarian appliance for Daryl in his newfound home. Luckily, the former occupants had chopped up enough wood and sheltered it under the single car canopy to keep the stove burning for at least a few days, maybe even longer, when Daryl could chop some wood himself.

His next priorities were showering, getting into some clean clothes, and finding something around the house to eat, if the former occupants even kept any food in the pantry at all during the wintertime. He didn't see why they would want to store food for the nine months they weren't at the homestead, but hunted the kitchen for food and drink in any case. He was able to dig up an unopened 12-pack of canned beer, which he set in a snowdrift next to the house to chill, and also an economy-sized can of unopened Virginia peanuts, but scarcely anything else. The house was primitive and did not have a refrigerator, an electric stove, or any other modern appliances save the generator, so Daryl really was on his own when it came to figuring out a strategy to hunt or fish for food. He wondered if the small grocery store two miles down still had any supplies.

The first thing Daryl did when he hooked up the generator was to take a long, hot bath and an equally long, hot shower after he finished soaking his stinking body in the bathtub for an hour or longer. He washed his hair twice with the cheap Suave shampoo the former owners had kept in the bathroom and scrubbed his body all over with the bar of Lava soap that had been stashed away in his own backpack. The scratch of the black bear's claw to his upper arm still felt raw and stung in the antiseptic of the soap, but he didn't give a shit. It was good to feel clean and almost human again.

After he dried off, he shaved off his unkempt beard growth with a couple of disposable razors and soap, and wrapped his towel around his waist to search the bedrooms for clean clothes. It wasn't like anyone would see him wandering the house naked in this remote neck of the rural town, but Daryl had always been a creature of habit.

What the homestead ranch house lacked in food, it compensated for in clean clothes that were stored away in the drawers and closet shelves. Daryl unearthed a pair of hunting cargos and a flannel shirt in one of the bedrooms' closets. The pants were a bit short in length and loose around his waist, but were passable and clean. He was even lucky enough to find some neatly-folded socks and boxer shorts in a musty dresser drawer that marginally fit him. He was going to have to find a pair of decent shoes somewhere; the hiking boots he'd been wearing since Hershel's farm, and which he had been using to wade through mud and water and hike a good 600 miles or so were toast.

Outside the great room's huge picture windows, Daryl could see it was already starting to snow that morning. He killed the generator to conserve its power and found some matches to start up a fire in the great room's wood-burning stove. After leaning outside the front door to retrieve a couple of beers, he sat in the plaid recliner in front of the stove, warming himself and enjoying a breakfast of Virginia peanuts and the almond cookies he'd swiped from the home in West Virginia, washed down with two cans of newly-cold beer. It was the most comfortable and at ease he had been in a few months.

"Figure I should go into town and look for some decent food," he said aloud, to no one in particular. He'd barely seen hide or hair of another human being on his long journey, and he was surprised to find that he had become lonely. It sucked not having anyone to chat with, even about the most banal shit that didn't involve geeks or simply surviving. At this point, he'd appreciate an engaging conversation about watching paint dry.

He found a clean, lined winter hunting jacket and begrudgingly pulled his filthy hiking boots on over his clean-socked feet. That was another thing he'd have to worry about, was finding a decent pair of shoes. Perhaps there was some kind of department store in town, even a small one, where he could loot a new pair.

Exiting the house, he strolled down the walkway toward the main road. The snow was still falling as he made his way to Belle Valley Road, which turned into Cambridge Street when it forked up with Township Highway 1261. He passed a few snow-coated shingle-roofed houses, a fire station, and a post office before he came to a small grocery store in a two-floor stone building that looked to have been built at the turn of the previous century. CLARK'S GROCERY, the sign next to the building read; underneath that sign was a marquee that announced, MILK EG S PRODUCE and PT HELP W NTED. Hey, maybe I can get a job here, he joked to himself, before he dusted off his well-worn hiking boots on the entrance's mat and went inside.

Although he found a few food items, he figured he couldn't get too comfortable in his new digs. Sooner or later, he'd have to make the final push for Virginia, on foot if he had to.

Andrea

It was chilly this time of year in Virginia, Andrea had found out as she stood watch in the cold at the fence with her rifle and wrapped her coat around her to keep her and her pregnant belly warm. The job was necessary but dull, with few walkers trying to get in the premises (easily picked off) and fewer survivors wanting to get in this time of year. Many survivors would already be holed up in wherever they were able to hibernate for the winter, but every now and then, a survivor would come to the gates, and she would escort him, her, or them to the city commissioner for admission and interviewing.

Today, she saw a bearded hiker trudge through the snow in the distance, armed with a crossbow and wearing warm-weather hunter's clothes and a cap. That crossbow reminds me of Daryl, she thought wistfully, squinting to make sure he was walking like a survivor and not a walker with a crossbow. His sturdy stride in a straight line toward the community told her, yes, he was a survivor all right.

Regardless, she raised her rifle and stared down its sight, following standard procedure. The survivor had to announce himself, and she had to size up in a few moments whether he had malevolent, Savior-like intentions or whether he was simply a guy looking for a safe place to call home.

As he drew closer, and she was able to get a better view of his face, her breath froze in her throat and her eyes widened. That couldn't be Daryl, she thought, come on, Andrea. That's wishful thinking. Snap out of it; you've just got pregnant brain.

She blinked and shook her head a few times away from her gun sight. She figured she'd look up again and the bearded survivor would simply turn out to be a fifty-year-old schmuck who'd found himself lost in the Appalachians and needed shelter and a cup of hot cocoa. She couldn't bear to face that kind of disappointed, but girded herself to do so and gave him another look as he approached her, his face filling with recognition.

It was him.

Daryl

The pretty woman who was very pregnant couldn't be her, could it? Daryl counted back the months. How the hell long ago was it that they'd lost each other? Was it really that long? 

“DARYL!!!” the woman cried out, fumbling to put the safety onto her gun to secure it before holstering it and trotting toward him as fast as she could with her heavy midriff. It was then he knew it was her for sure, and there was no question in his mind at all that the baby was anyone's but theirs.

“Oh, my God. Andrea!!” he heard himself say as he caught her in his arms, the two of them clinging to each other, together after so long. He pulled away for a moment, only to clasp her face in his and make sure it really, truly was her. 

“Oh, Jesus.” Even though the tears in his eyes blurred his vision somewhat, yes, it was her. She smiled back at him, her eyes red, before kissing him again.

“I thought I was never going to see you again,” she sobbed between kisses. His beard felt scratchy against her face, but she didn't give a shit. It was him. It was really Daryl.

One of his hands left the locked embrace to touch her midriff through the heavy winter jacket and the baby that grew inside it. He swore he could feel a kick―his child's kick. He opened his mouth to say something, but was only able to emit an amazed gasp.

“Andrea—what...?” was all he was finally able to say.

She smiled at him through her tears. “I told you I had something important to tell you,” she murmured, before Daryl kissed her again, his hand still on her belly and their baby within.

Finally a couple again, and now a family, they kissed each other for as long as they wanted, not caring that other members of the community, including Glenn of all people, were gathering at the gate watching them, smiling and cheering, with tears in their own eyes that would've embarrassed the hell out of Daryl in different circumstances.

Epilogue

Amy Sophia Dixon

Like a boss.

Shortly after Amy Sophia's birth, that was how Daryl Dixon would describe Andrea's giving birth to his first daughter when talking over beers with Rick and his hunting buddies when the guys got a little buzzed and the conversations meandered to their women and children. Rick and the guys, many of whom were first-time fathers themselves (Rick excluded) were curious to see how the new dad was doing and how his strong sharp-shooter of a fiancée was doing as a new mom. 

“Like a boss,” he'd tell his friends in the makeshift bar that used to be a coffee shop, with home-crafted amber bock thanks to T-Dog's newfound competence in the microbrewery skills department. 

Lacking Lamaze classes and relying only on Dr. Cloyd's guidance and the firsthand testimonies of Michonne and Maggie with regards to their pregnancies, neither Daryl nor Andrea knew what the fuck they were getting into the moment Andrea's water broke and the real laboring began. 

Besides kissing the top of her blonde, sweat-filled head, all Daryl knew to tell his beloved was, “breathe, keep breathing,” the way he remembered from movies―any movies―that had any kind of childbirth scenes in them from before the ZA. He reckoned he must've sounded like an idiot, but Andrea's reassuring grasp on his hand as she pushed, and pushed, and pushed―for hours, it seemed―and finally brought forth their beautiful, light-brown-haired little girl was more than enough comfort to him that the mother of his child supported him as much as he was coaching (or trying to coach) her as best he could through a difficult delivery without the benefit of local anesthetics or a functioning hospital. 

During that time, his mind flashed back to the prison, where the student nurse Alice was guiding Lori through her delivery of Judith, long may they rest in peace, all of them. If his buddy Rick could handle the somewhat more Spartan conditions in the prison, with considerably much less support than he and Andrea were given, then he was sure he and Andrea could make it through their first child's birth without freaking the hell out.

His wife was a boss, all right. Not only with the birth, but with the constant midnight feedings and diaper changes and cuddlings, which he was surprised he was more than thrilled to share in the duties for their little girl. They tag-teamed on security and baby duties, he taking the graveyard security shift while she took mornings and doted on Amy while they both let each other get in some coveted sleep. Daryl would catch a glimpse of Andrea nursing Amy in her constable's uniform, gazing at their precious daughter lovingly even as she no doubt was as exhausted as he was, and wondered how she did it. This was what being new parents felt like, he thought―tired and overworked beyond all measure, but thrilled and joyous out of their minds to have her and, finally, each other.

This time, however, Daryl and Andrea had the benefit of the ZA nearly fully behind them. As Dr. Jenner back at the CDC had alluded, the French had actually gotten their shit together enough to quite literally save the world. Not only did they discover a vaccine to prevent the virus, they also concocted an airborne cure that surviving single-engine pilots from Kazakhstan to Argentina, from Israel to China, from Istanbul to Johannesburg to Seattle, Washington transported and crop-dusted to lay the millions and millions of walkers to rest and to finally be a menace to neither themselves nor the surviving human beings of the planet.

In Andrea's ninth month of pregnancy, just weeks before Amy Sophia made her debut on the planet, mass graves were marked, mass cremations were ignited, and mass memorials and funerals for the dead and now re-dead were held around the globe. Communities were built and rebuilt, governments were formed, and human society started rebirthing itself, slowly but surely. No iPads, no Kardashian reality TV shows, no trendy nightclubs or latte shops or material things of the past life were there to comfort them, but what the remaining few human beings had was one another.

Starting with Amy Sophia Dixon, Glenn Herschel Cho, Theodore Douglas Martin Junior, Sherlynn Lori Grimes, and other newborn babies in Alexandria, Virginia and beyond. Maggie and Glenn were married, Michonne and T-Dog got hitched, and Andrea and Daryl exchanged vows in the newly established courthouse presided by none other than Rick Grimes, honorary Justice of the Peace of the City of Alexandria, who himself was a new father and his eldest son, Carl, now a teenager, a big brother again. With their friends by their side, and with Daryl holding his baby girl in the crook of one arm while holding Andrea at his side with the other, the couple posed for their wedding portrait outside a garden while Glenn shot a Polaroid, one of the first photos in the aftermath of the ZA.

The grainy Polaroid of Andrea in her simple white summer gown holding hands with Daryl in his somewhat ill-fitting sport coat, button-down white Oxford, and khakis was testament to the New Age. Someday, the great-grandchildren of Andrea and Daryl's great-grandchildren would view the framed Polaroid and reminisce about the days when human life re-began. 


End file.
